


This Time Around

by Melyanna (darthmelyanna)



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26325679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthmelyanna/pseuds/Melyanna
Summary: With acrimonious ends to relationships just behind them, Christine Chapel and Leonard McCoy come to Starfleet to move on, and they both find more than new careers.
Relationships: Chapel/McCoy
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I have veered off somewhat from TOS canon in some respects. (Hey, what's the fun of an alternate reality if you can't tinker with things?) Just stating that for the record.

  
The day Roger Korby proposed to Christine Chapel, she had been planning to inform him that she was leaving him, not for another man but for the galaxy at large. It made dessert awkward. She was annoyed but not entirely surprised when she wound up paying the check.

She hadn't exactly planned on breaking up with him. He could have waited for her. The idea of joining Starfleet was to finally get her PhD at the Academy. A five-year stint in space was how she was supposed to pay them back for the education. If Roger had really been serious about the whole marriage idea, he'd have been willing to entertain the notion. But no, he rejected it out of hand and came very near to mocking the whole idea of Christine furthering her education. _That_ was when she broke up with him.

It didn't start to sink in until the next morning, when she woke alone. She remembered feeling something similar years earlier when she separated from Starfleet, though lesser in intensity. She'd woken up wondering what to do now that such a huge part of her decision-making paradigm was no longer in her life. It made sense. Roger had defined her late twenties in much the same way that Starfleet had defined several years prior.

When she left Starfleet, she missed the predictability that military service had brought. Leaving Roger brought back many of the same feelings, but more complicated. She couldn't turn off her feelings for him the way she'd traded uniforms for civilian clothes. So she filled her time with her last weeks at work, with her move to San Francisco, with readjusting to military life, with going back to school. When she had time to think again about Roger in more than fleeting moments, the emotions were slightly dulled, and some things seemed clearer as distance gave her a little objectivity.

She'd been right to break it off. Love provided no excuse for the things he'd said to her, the things he'd expected of her, and her love for him was no match for her respect for herself. She'd wanted his respect too and for a long time she'd thought she commanded that, but looking back, she wondered, and then wonder turned to doubt.

Christine knew one thing, though. She wouldn't make that mistake again. The next time she got into a relationship, she wouldn't go in with stars in her eyes.

Once she was more or less settled at the Academy, she was asked to start taking shifts in the infirmary. There was always a need for competent nurses, and she had been at the top of her class her first time around. Despite being a doctoral candidate, however, Christine had been out of the service long enough that they required her to retake some basic courses before she was reinstated and given her promotion to lieutenant commander.

It made for some chain-of-command issues for the first year – for heaven's sake, she was outranked by the cleaning crew, yet she was older and more experienced than most of the other nurses. It was strange and awkward, and she would be very happy when she finished her refresher courses, got her commission, and could get on her way to her doctorate already.

The Academy's infirmary was, for once, not short on nurses for the surgical suite, so Christine was rarely scheduled in there. It suited her, as she'd always enjoyed working with patients while they were conscious. However, one afternoon while she was on duty, the nurse assisting in a surgery ran out of the OR throwing up and the surgeon bellowed for help. Suddenly it was in everyone's best interest that she scrub up faster than she believed possible and enter the operating room.

"What the hell happened to Rook?" the surgeon demanded as Christine took her place across from him.

"If I had to venture a guess, Doctor, food poisoning, stomach flu, or in a delicate way. Bear in mind I have no evidence for any of those hypotheses beyond the fact that she's throwing up in the next room."

He grumbled something she couldn't understand through his mask. "Well, Nurse, what's your name?" he asked after a minute. He had a Southern accent, and if she were to place it, she'd say coastal South Carolina or Georgia.

"Chapel, sir."

"McCoy. Pleased to meet you. I'd shake your hand, but that might be awkward for this guy." He jerked his head at the patient.

Christine had heard the report as the young man on the table was brought in. Massive industrial accident, eleven fatalities so far and a bunch of patients in other hospitals. This man had been sent here because the civilian hospitals were overwhelmed and the Academy infirmary had one of the most advanced surgical centers in California. But this was not a time for technology; it was one of those situations which required the intimacy and intuition of human hands.

Amid the usual to-and-fro of the operating room, the surgeon looked up at her with narrowed eyes. "Have we met?" he asked. "Before today, anyway."

Christine frowned. "I wouldn't recognize my own mother in surgical garb," she replied, handing him the instrument he needed. "They don't normally schedule me for OR."

A few minutes later, though, she found herself watching his hands. A surgeon was only as good as his hands, and this man's seemed remarkable, steady as a rock. His fingers were nimble as a pianist's, with a delicate but sure touch. It was no wonder he'd been called on for this particular operation. How had she not noticed those hands before?

In the back of her mind, she could see his fingers twirling a stylus, tapping idly on a chair's arm, or cradling his chin. She hadn't even seen his chin but she could still picture the scene. If she'd been anywhere but the operating room, she might have imagined other things too. She'd always had a weakness for good hands.

Somehow Christine managed to make it through the operation without her brain actually going to very many other places. After the patient was taken to the recovery room, she and the doctor went through the scrub room to the lockers beyond it. Christine pulled her cap and gown off and tossed them into the hamper, and McCoy did the same. Standing close to him, she now noticed that he was at least fifteen centimeters taller than her, and she was drawn to the breadth of his shoulders, which were particularly noticeable as he stretched his arms.

They moved toward the lockers together. Christine just wanted to gather up her things and go home. The surgery had gone three hours past her shift and she was dead on her feet. However, she was distracted when she saw McCoy grab a red shirt out of his locker and pull it over his head. "You're a cadet?" she blurted out.

"Yes," he replied through gritted teeth. Then he fixed her with a long, piercing look. "I do know you. You're in that horrible history of space combat class."

She gasped. "Of course!" All those things she'd been imagining him doing with his hands were things she'd actually seen him do during lectures. "I hate that class."

"I know," he replied. "Maybe it gets more interesting later, but right now it's a lot of 'this ship tried to attack that ship and they wound up colliding and everyone died a horrible death.'"

"Exactly," Christine replied, grinning with an energy she'd have thought was long gone.

"You hungry?" McCoy asked abruptly, closing his locker. "I was supposed to meet my roommate for dinner, but I'm sure he's given up on me by now."

His drawl did a lot more to her central nervous system than it had any right to, considering she was from New Orleans and had grown up hearing voices like that. Then again, maybe its familiarity in this place so different from home was the reason for its effect. "There's a barbecue place not far from campus that I've been wanting to try," she said. "I think it's North Carolina barbecue."

"Well, I'm from Georgia," he replied. "Close enough."

She smiled at him again and ducked her head toward her locker. "Give me a couple minutes."

"Take all the time you need," he said, in a sort of sing-song voice as he left the room.

She gave serious thought to taking a shower before heading out, but that would probably be an abuse of what he'd said. She settled instead on brushing her hair and washing her face. She'd look presentable, at least, as her mother would say.

McCoy was waiting a few feet down the corridor, reading a PADD. Christine didn't miss how his eyes swiftly darted down her body, from her blonde hair now loose over her shoulders to the hem of her minidress and lower. Her cheeks flushed and she cursed mentally. She'd gotten used to the occasional leering of patients and colleagues and cadets over the last several months, so why was it that this relative stranger checked her out and she actually blushed?

_Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it._

He seemed amused, but was enough of a gentleman not to indicate such aloud. "I'm Leonard, by the way," he said. "Or Len. Or McCoy. Or Bones. I'm not too picky."

She raised a brow, suddenly curious. "Bones?"

"It's a silly nickname," he replied, waving slightly. "From a guy whose middle name is Tiberius, so he really has no room to talk."

She laughed quietly. "I'm Christine. Or Chris. Or Chrissy, but only if you want me to hit you."

He nodded seriously. "Duly noted."

Together they set off into the dark and foggy night. The restaurant was close enough for them to walk there, which was more pleasant than Christine would have imagined. It had been a while since she'd had the time to take a walk. In the back of her mind, she was remembering all the things she really ought to be doing back in her apartment to make up for the three hours of studying she'd lost to that operation, but she stubbornly beat those thoughts back. She was going to enjoy herself if it killed her.

The food was amazing, but in the middle of the slab of ribs they shared she found herself staring at Len's hands again. He sucked a dribble of sauce from his pinky and she nearly whimpered. He caught on to her distraction, but fortunately misinterpreted its origin. "What?" he said, wiping his fingers on his napkin. "I'm not going to waste good barbecue sauce just to be polite."

Christine shook her head and reached for another rib. "Never mind."

"So what brings you to Starfleet?" he asked, focusing for the moment on the cornbread that had come with the ribs. "You must be older than most cadets if they let you in the OR."

"Speak for yourself," she said, making a face.

"Well, I am. I'm twenty-eight. Most of these kids are ten years younger than me." He started eating the dense yellow bread with his fingers, somewhat absently. "In the last ten years, I finished school, did my internship and residency, got married, had a kid, and got divorced."

Christine blinked a few times. "You've been busy."

"You could say that. You?"

"My life was pretty boring until a few months ago," she replied. "I was busy, sure. But then I decided I wanted to get my doctorate in biochemistry. The Academy has the best program in the field and I was really excited to get in. Then my boyfriend decided he wanted us to get married instead of me getting my doctorate. It all went downhill from there."

"I'm sorry," he said. "That's never easy."

She shrugged, trying to keep her feelings under control. She'd had excellent reasons to break up with Roger, but that didn't erase all the things she'd liked about him. Then she looked across the table at her companion's hands. He still had a tan line on the ring finger of his left hand. He knew exactly what she was going through. "How long ago was it?" she asked. "If you don't mind my asking."

He made the same kind of ambivalent gesture she had as he reached for his beer. "It's been final for about six months," he replied. "She left me for a guy she knew back in college, before she met me. Probably won't last, but I'm not going back to her. Woman damn near ruined me."

Christine winced. "What about..."

"My daughter?" he supplied. "She lives with Jocelyn. Obviously. My parents are taking over my custodial rights while I'm away. And I call Joanna every day that I can."

She smiled a little at that, though it wasn't exactly a happy expression. "That must be difficult."

"Yeah. Hard to explain to a five-year-old that you're moving out and joining Starfleet." He set his beer down with a thud and sighed. "I'm sorry. I really didn't mean to get this maudlin. This was just supposed to be dinner, not therapy."

Christine tried but failed to smother a smile at that. Somehow Len managed to look both annoyed and pleased at the same time. "Well, as long as you're entertained," he drawled.

For a moment, she forgot her resolve about relationships. In the last several months, she had successfully avoided any kind of entanglement with a man who expressed an interest. McCoy hadn't expressed an interest, not really, but she was caught off-guard to find herself warming to him anyway. Given his demeanor, it was a little surprising. Given her experience, it was downright annoying.

She opened her mouth to say something, wanting to change the subject, but Len was suddenly distracted by something behind her. "Christine, I'm really sorry about what's about to happen," he said quickly, and that was all the warning she had.

A young blond man bounded up to the table. "Bones!" he cried. "I've been looking everywhere."

"Jim," Len said, half greeting and half warning.

Jim noticed Christine's presence then. "Why, Bones, you dog," he said, punching Len's arm lightly. "You didn't tell me anything!"

"This isn't – oh, stop smiling, Jim. You look like an idiot." For her part, Christine was hiding a grin behind her napkin. "Jim, this is Christine Chapel. She was assisting me in a surgery this evening. We were both hungry. Christine, this is my roommate, Jim Kirk, but I'm probably going to kill him soon, so don't feel obliged to remember that."

That sent her into a fit of giggles as she shook the man's hand. Then Jim was shoving McCoy further into the booth so he could sit across from Christine, his chin resting in one hand. "I'm starting to see why Bones never mentioned you," he said. "You're definitely my type."

"What, female?" Len remarked under his breath. That got him an elbow in the ribs from his roommate.

"Len never mentioned me because we didn't meet until today," she said. "We've got a class together, but it's one of those giant lectures. You can't know everyone."

"I'd have met you already if we shared a class," Jim said, clearly goading McCoy. Len smacked Jim's hands as he tried to take some of their food.

"I'm not sure that's a compliment, Jim," Christine replied. "It's certainly not a flattering admission."

He shot a grin at her that was clearly disarming most of the time. But as handsome and charming as Jim Kirk was, Christine really wasn't into young and flashy. She picked up her purse and said, "I'm going to wash my hands, McCoy. That should give you time to dispose of the body."

Kirk feigned an incredibly hurt look, but Len gave her a big smile.

When she returned to the table, Jim was indeed gone. "Do we have to make a speedy getaway?" she asked.

McCoy laughed. "No, he spotted another pretty girl and decided she might be a safer target." He got up from the table. "I can walk you home, if you want."

He must have paid the check already. "How much do I owe you for dinner?"

"Don't worry about it," he said. When she opened her mouth to protest, he cut her off. "Look, you jumped into the middle of a surgery blindfolded and you were perfect. Consider it my thanks."

Christine was a consummate professional. She really was. But Leonard McCoy called her perfect ("at the end of what other people would call a date," her mother's voice said in the back of her mind) and her cheeks turned pink. "Next time, I'm buying."

He didn't remark on her assumption that there would be a next time. He just narrowed his eyes playfully and said, "We'll see."

As they exited, Len gently and briefly placed his hand on the small of her back. She had to remind herself to keep breathing.

_Damn it._

* * *

  
McCoy barely got home in time to call Jo before she went to bed. It was her first week of kindergarten and she had all sorts of stories to tell him. Len was really happy to hear that she was enjoying herself. She rattled off things about her classmates, half of whom sounded like they were going to be her new best friends.

Then she asked him the question she always asked. "What about you, Daddy? Do you still like school?"

Len laughed a little. "I do," he replied. The door to the room slid open. Jim was home remarkably early even if it was a school night.

"Are you making friends? Mommy says it's important to make friends at school."

Behind him, Jim chuckled and approached the screen. "Hi, Jim!" Joanna said, a delighted smile on her face. They'd talked a few times in the last several months, and Jo had an inexplicable fondness for him. Probably because they were roughly the same age in maturity.

"Hi, Jo-jo," he said, getting a giggle from her. He leaned down in front of the screen. "You should definitely ask your dad about the new friend he made today."

Len bit his tongue, because the only other option was swearing, which he tried not to do in front of Joanna. "Daddy?" she said, looking very curious.

"Her name is Christine, honey," he decided to say. "I work with her."

Jo sat up a little straighter. "Is she pretty?"

"She's gorgeous," Jim said before Len could say anything. "But not as pretty as you."

Jim had managed to say just the thing that would distract Jo from her line of questioning. In the next minute, Len heard his ex-wife's voice. "Joanna, it's time for bed," Jocelyn was calling.

Joanna curled her nose up. "I have to take a bath now."

Len smiled a little. "Yes, you do. I'll talk to you again soon, sweetheart."

"Bye, Daddy! I love you!"

"I love you too, Jo."

The image snapped to black and Len swiveled his chair around. "You live to interrupt me, don't you?"

Jim slapped his shoulder. "Come on, Bones. Anyone else in that restaurant would have assumed you and that Aphrodite were on a date."

Len turned to his bag as he debated what subject to start studying first. "Give it a rest, Jim."

"Okay," Jim said, in a voice that clearly wasn't dropping the subject. "Maybe I'll ask her out."

"Like hell you will," McCoy growled.

"Hah! I knew it!" Jim nearly yelled, pointing down at him. "Man, you are so easy."

"What are you doing home so early, anyway?" Len asked, trying desperately to change the subject.

"I'm scheduled for the Kobayashi Maru tomorrow," Kirk replied. "Gotta get my beauty sleep."

"Have fun with that," Len said. He'd heard stories about the Kobayashi Maru and wasn't looking forward to his own turn at it.

The next day, he walked into his history of space combat lecture looking forward to it more than he ever had before. Christine was already sitting at one of the back tables. He usually sat back there, where he was above and behind the rest of the class, and he knew she didn't normally sit there. She would have been a lot more firmly fixed in his mind if she'd been in the back row instead of a distant point somewhere in the hall.

His feet were taking him to that table without his foreknowledge. Suddenly he was standing at the other end of her table. "Hey," he said, failing to come up with anything more clever.

She looked up at him and smiled brightly. "Hi," she replied. "Let me move some of this stuff."

She cleared some of her things away from the table and he took up her implicit invitation to sit next to her. He slouched down into the chair, quite a contrast to her straight back and feet together. Of course, in that skirt, lounging around like him would be an invitation to a lot of attention she probably didn't want.

"How's your essay coming along?" she asked. In the last class, they'd been assigned an essay on the _Eisenhower-Novy Mir_ accident, one of the first big ship-on-ship collisions.

"It's coming," he replied. "Had some difficulty finding translations of some Russian sources, though. I'd have tried the linguistics center last night, but I'm pretty sure they were closed by the time I got off the comm with my daughter."

"I might be able to help you with that," Christine said. "One of the girls who lives across the hall from me is in xenolinguistics. I think she speaks just about every major language on the planet. And she's taking this course next semester, so she'd probably be happy to have a leg up on an assignment."

"That'd be a huge help," Len said. "Probably help you too, right?"

She shook her head. "I'm writing about the American media coverage of the accident. Mostly because I didn't want to bother with Russian sources."

The professor entered the well down below, effectively ending the conversation. Len always found ways to distract himself during this class, but today he didn't have to go far. Chapel was a very attentive student, and he found it inordinately funny to pull her focus away in any way he could.

Jim really was rubbing off on him.

After passing notes for half an hour, he set his elbow on the table and his head in his hand and started leaning toward her, ever so slowly. He kept looking over at her as surreptitiously as he could, but she didn't seem to be reacting. That was unfortunate. He was going to have to step it up.

Very quietly, McCoy pretended to snore. Still, nothing. She reached up to touch her hair but didn't even look at him. Then a moment later, something sharp jabbed into his side so suddenly that he jumped, nearly knocking the chair over.

"Is something wrong, Cadet?" the professor below asked. Nearly everyone in the lecture hall was turned around and watching him, and he felt his face get hot.

"No, sir," Len answered. As things resumed, he looked at Chapel again. She was carefully placing a pin back in her hair, which was pulled back into a bun at the nape of her neck. "Little minx," he muttered.

"Why, Doctor, I have no idea what you're talking about," she replied lowly, exaggerating her own Southern accent. Then he could have sworn she winked at him.

Somehow, that embarrassed him even more than disrupting the entire class.

When the class was finally, finally over, they both had to report to shifts in the infirmary within the hour, so they meandered that way together. "So how's Jim?" she asked as they walked. "Have you killed him yet?"

Len didn't really want to talk about his roommate with her, but he indulged her. "Nah, he was doing the Kobayashi Maru this morning. Figured I could kill him later."

"Ugh," she replied. "I remember that sim. I kept playing it over in my head for days afterward."

He frowned. The reason Kirk was doing the simulation before him was that he wasn't on the command track. "How come you've done that already? I didn't think medical personnel were being called up for it for another month."

Her cheeks flushed, which was ridiculously pretty. "This isn't my first rodeo."

Len stopped dead in his tracks at that, and Christine turned around to face him. "You mean you've been through the Academy before?"

"I went to nursing school here many moons ago," she explained. "Did my five years after the Academy and left for civilian work. I'm in all these cadet-level courses now because I've been out long enough they're making me retake some things."

"Why would you need to take history of space combat again?" he asked, momentarily distracted from the possibility that she was older than him.

"That's been added to the required curriculum since I graduated."

"Which was how long ago?"

She was still blushing, but she looked at him playfully. "Not telling."

This was flirting, he remembered as they reached the hospital. It had been a long time since he'd been in those beginning stages with a woman, testing the waters and wondering how far this would go. After everything with Jocelyn had failed so spectacularly, he honestly wasn't sure how far he wanted this to go. Christine was pretty and clearly smarter than him and laughed at him in a good way, but he could admit to himself that he was wary. Get thrown off a horse once, he supposed, and worry about getting on again.

They parted ways for their shifts, which was likely for the best. Even so, he wondered if she'd take her dinner break when he did. At least Jim probably wouldn't burst in during that.

Though he wouldn't bet on it.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

  
Her first time through the Academy, Christine had been quick to make loads of friends. She wasn't sure why the process was taking so much longer this time. She was older, certainly (a couple years older than McCoy, even), but it took a nightmare about the people she'd lost during her first deployment to explain the mystery to her.

It had taken her a long time to get over all the loss of that mission. She had never really stopped thinking of her former classmates as fellow students, and while she assisted in operations it was all too easy to think of nights they'd spent studying or drinking or talking. That must have been why she was having so much trouble getting beyond inane small talk these days.

And that was no way to live her life. She had to make an effort, and soon.

At the end of a shift, the opportunity presented itself. She arrived back at her apartment to find one of her neighbors sitting in the hallway. "Uhura?" she said, hoping she had the right name.

The young woman looked up and sighed in relief. "Hi," she replied. "It's Chapel, right?"

Christine keyed in her code and nodded. "You forget your entry code?"

"No, my roommate's in there with a guy," Uhura replied. "I asked her to do that less. I think she took me literally instead of figuring out that I don't like her doing this at all."

"Why don't you come in, Uhura?" Christine asked. "At the very least, I've got a chair you can sit in."

Uhura smiled broadly at the invitation and scrambled to gather up her belongings. She was really quite lovely, Christine decided, especially when she was happy. Most of the time Christine saw her, she was intensely focused on one thing or another. "Thank you so much," she said. "And please, you can call me Nyota if you want."

"Then call me Christine. You hungry?"

Christine got started throwing something together for supper while Nyota got her belongings organized on the kitchen table. It was large enough that she could leave her things there and they could still eat at it. Then Nyota came up to the other side of the counter and rested her elbows on it, looking curiously at the pile of vegetables Christine was chopping. "So what do you do around here?" she asked. "You seem to keep odd hours."

"I'm actually here to do my doctorate," Christine replied. "I went through the Academy's nursing school about ten years ago, though, so I have to take some refresher courses before they'll let me get started with that."

"Oh," Nyota said. "What will your doctorate be in?"

"Biochemistry. You're working toward communications and xenolinguistics, right?"

"How did you know that?"

"You've got a talkative roommate."

Nyota rolled her eyes. "Gaila has a tendency to tell everyone everything."

Christine smiled a little and dumped everything she'd chopped into a hot pan on the stove. "It's not the worst fault in the world."

Nyota looked unconvinced, but Christine let the subject drop. "So are you enjoying Starfleet?"

"So far," Nyota replied. "It's challenging academically, but that's the point, right? I've got great professors and most of the other cadets are fun to be around."

"But?" Christine prompted, sensing there was more as she stirred their supper.

Nyota hesitated, in a way that suggested that she wasn't accustomed to talking very much about herself. Then she sighed. "You've been in space, right?"

Christine blinked at the seeming change in subject, but she nodded. "Five years aboard the _Dallas_ ," she replied.

"Is space as amazing as it should be?" Nyota asked. "This is all I've wanted to do since I was a little girl, and now that I'm here..."

"You're worried it's going to be a disappointment." Christine remembered that feeling well. Fortunately, though, she could give a good answer to the young woman.

She turned the heat off on the stove and divvied up the food between two plates. Nyota took the plates to the table while Christine got them something to drink. Then, when they had sat down, she said, "We took a shuttle up to the _Dallas_. That first moment when we were above Earth's atmosphere – Nyota, you haven't seen stars until you've been above our sky. All I could think of was 'stars, hide your fires.'"

"That's pretty," Nyota said, although she also looked slightly confused.

"Shakespeare," Christine replied, stirring her food with her fork while she decided where to start with it. "It's from _Macbeth_ , but the context is somewhat less than dignified. It's when the first of the witches' prophecies comes true and he practically starts clapping like a seal."

Nyota snorted out a laugh before turning to her dinner. "This is amazing," she said, with the first bite in her mouth. She quickly covered her mouth with her fingers. "What's in this?"

"Family secret," Christine replied coyly as she started into her own plate.

After they'd finished eating and had cleaned up the kitchen, they stepped out onto the balcony of Christine's apartment. It was one of several advantages of being here for the second time. She didn't have a roommate and her living quarters were less dorm room than apartment. She had a kitchen, a full bathroom, and this little spot outside, big enough for some chairs and a table on which to set a glass of wine. They stood at the railing, though, looking up. Christine pointed out one of the stars near Orion. "The first planet I set foot on other than Earth was in that system," she explained. "The race that lived there claimed there was a medical emergency. We were held hostage for ninety-seven hours."

"Wow," Nyota breathed, and she hadn't even heard half of the story. "How'd you get out?"

"Doctor Puri had me feign appendicitis. It distracted our captors long enough that we were able to overpower them."

"Why you?"

"I was in the drama group here."

"Wow," Nyota said again. "Who knew extracurriculars could come in handy out there?"

That made Christine laugh. She went on to tell more stories about her time on the _Dallas_ , and Nyota drank them up. There was at least ten years' difference in their ages, but Christine felt more comfortable with the younger woman than she had with some of her coworkers from her last job, and many of Roger's friends. It was just a relief to be relaxed and talk with someone who had the same interests outside of her immediate work.

By the end of the evening, Nyota was calling her Chris and they were making plans to meet after classes a few days later. After Nyota left, Christine wound up staying up much later than she'd planned, but that was all right. Theoretically they would learn how to do work while hanging out. Even if they didn't, that wasn't the end of the world.

That Saturday evening, Christine was waiting for Nyota outside the science complex. Gaila was with her, looking very pleased. "Christine, this is going to be so much fun!" the Orion exclaimed as soon as they were within earshot. Nyota looked a little embarrassed, but at least she didn't seem to disagree.

After a hug from Gaila, Christine took Nyota's arm and started walking. "Come on," she said. "There's this hole-in-the-wall pizza place that I adored when I was here the first time."

"Hole-in-the-wall?" Gaila repeated.

Nyota had explained the other night that her roommate was still getting used to idioms, even though her Standard was pretty good. "It's a place that doesn't look like much from the outside," Christine explained. "You'd walk past it and either not notice it, or not want to go in because it looks sort of run down."

They didn't have far to walk, which was good because none of them were really wearing the right shoes for hiking up and down the hills of San Francisco. The place clearly hadn't be discovered by the latest crop of cadets, because they got a pretty good table without much waiting. Then, almost as soon as they'd begun to peruse the menu, Christine looked up to see McCoy enter the restaurant. She smiled at him without thinking, which drew the attention of her companions.

Nyota turned around to see who Christine was looking at, and then looked back at Christine in horror. "You're kidding me."

Christine frowned. "What?"

"Jim Kirk?" Nyota mouthed.

"What? No!" Christine hadn't even noticed that Len's roommate was following him. "The other guy. Tall, dark, and handsome."

Nyota looked relieved, and Gaila stretched upward a little to get a good look. "He's intriguing," she said. "I think I like the younger one better, though."

"You would," Nyota muttered.

"Cut it out, you two," Christine said softly as the two men approached. "Hi, Len."

"Hey, Christine," he replied.

"I thought you were working tonight."

"Wound up switching shifts."

She smiled at that and remembered to introduce her companions. "Girls, this is McCoy and Kirk. Gentlemen, Uhura and Gaila."

"Pleased to meet you," Len said politely. Jim, of course, had other ideas.

"Mind if we pull up a couple chairs?" he asked.

Gaila grinned. "Of course not!"

For a few seconds, the two younger women traded silent glares and mouthed demands while the men grabbed chairs. Christine, meanwhile, was trying not to react to the fact that Len settled rather close to her. For a second she was pleased by the attention, then irritated with herself for it. Then again, there was little point in fighting it. She liked him and found him attractive, but she was a grownup. She could focus on something other than those eyes and shoulders and hands.

The rest of the meal went pleasantly enough, despite Nyota's discomfort with Jim Kirk. That night on her balcony, she'd explained how she met Jim and how he was still trying to find out her first name whenever they crossed paths. Christine was willing to humor her on that count and carefully addressed her by surname the whole night.

Then the younger ones went to the old-fashioned jukebox in the corner of the restaurant to do something about the wretched music that was playing. "We'll be right back," Nyota assured Christine and McCoy. "Don't tell any more good stories about space travel. Or Shakespeare."

As the others left, Len leveled a look at her. "Shakespeare?"

"We were talking the other night," she replied. "I was trying to explain what it's like seeing stars outside of Earth's atmosphere. I still can't come up with anything better than the Scottish play."

He leaned forward, elbows on the table and his beer held by the neck of the bottle with only his thumb and two fingers. She couldn't quite keep from staring at his hand. "Stars, hide your fires," he said, "let light not see my deep desires."

Christine was so surprised that she didn't think to correct his quotation. It sounded less ominous with certain words left out anyway. "You a fan of the bard?"

"He had a good line now and then," Len allowed gruffly.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence, finishing off the pizza still at the table. As the kids headed back, Len said, "By the way, Jim's probably going to say something about us being halfway to the altar now. We've had two meals together."

"That he knows of," Christine teased. "I'm sure he'll find a ready ally in Gaila."

Jim was, in fact, rather distracted from his pursuit of Uhura by Gaila's presence. Gaila didn't seem to mind, and Nyota was positively relieved. "Do you think he knows about her physiology?" Len asked.

"Hey, he's your roommate. Not my responsibility to explain the facts of alien life."

He snorted before taking another drink. "We could ditch them, you know," he said. Christine thought he sounded nervous, but it was getting loud in the restaurant and it might just be that he was a light drinker.

"I'd lose Jim, but I'd feel really bad if I abandoned the girls with him. Even if they could both take him with one hand tied behind their backs," she said, which got him to smile. "And yes, if that ever happens, we're selling tickets."

"We'd make a fortune," he agreed.

The others finally arrived at the table again. "Bones, me and Gaila are going to hit this club she knows downtown. You in?"

Nyota was looking at Christine with a desperate, silent plea. It was obvious that she didn't want to go along. Len either didn't catch the expression or decided to let Christine give Nyota an excuse not to go. "What do you say?" he asked of her.

Christine shook her head. "I'm working an early shift in the morning."

"Party pooper," Jim complained. "Come on, Bones, she can find her way back by herself. I have it on good authority that this isn't her first time through the Academy. She's not getting lost."

"Why, how gentlemanly of you, Mr. Kirk," Christine said, rolling her eyes.

"It's the twenty-third century, Chris," Jim complained. "I thought you were supposed to be empowered already."

"And here I thought you were supposed to be a little more evolved." She rose and turned her attention to Len. "Doctor, I'm certain I can get home without incident."

"I'm certain you can," he replied. "On the other hand, if you'd like some company on the way, I'd be happy to walk with you."

He stood up as well and pulled his jacket back on. Meanwhile, Nyota smacked Jim's arm. " _That_ is how you're supposed to treat a woman in the twenty-third century," she said.

Jim didn't seem to have anything to say to that. He just glared at Len as Len joined Nyota and Christine on their way out of the restaurant. "So I never did ask," Christine said, "but how did you and Jim find this place?"

Len smiled. "It reminded me of a restaurant in Jackson. I lived in the apartment above a pizza place one year in med school."

As they waited at a crosswalk, Nyota was shivering in the cool evening air. Len shrugged out of his jacket and held it out to her silently. "Oh, no, I'm fine," Nyota protested.

"No, you're not," he said.

"Take it, Nyota," Christine advised her. "You're not going to win this argument."

Nyota took it, looking a little sheepish. Then, to turn the conversation away from herself, she said, "Doctor McCoy, how did you wind up with James Kirk as your roommate?"

Len kept them entertained all the way back to their building by recounting Jim's antics, from the minute they met on a shuttle in Iowa. When they'd gotten to the building, Christine invited them both to her apartment for a cup of coffee, and she wasn't terribly surprised when they both said yes. "Just move that stuff out of that chair," she said, gesturing to the big arm chair as she moved into the kitchen. "Wasn't really planning on having guests tonight, but I'll live."

"I take it you've got a Southern mother who would be appalled at your having guests in this state," McCoy replied as he cleared off the chair in question.

"You speak as though you know," she suggested.

"My ex-wife is not what you call tidy," he said. "Fortunately Jo's with my parents enough that maybe she'll learn about cleaning things, even if I can't be there to teach her that myself."

"Jo's your daughter?" Nyota asked.

From the kitchen, Christine saw Len nod. "Want to see pictures?"

Christine had seen the pictures earlier in the week, but she stood in the kitchen watching him and Nyota with a smile. Len was grinning, honestly grinning as he showed off his beautiful daughter. There was something sort of bittersweet about it, him out in California with his little girl in Savannah, but Christine understood that need to leave even with strong inducements to stay.

When he was done with pictures, the coffee was ready and the three of them sat down together in the living room. Nyota sat with her back straight and her coffee in her hand the whole time. Len, on the other hand, put both his mug and his feet on the old trunk currently pulling double duty as a coffee table. They talked about classes, the one thing they all had in common right now, until Nyota said she had to go. Len glanced at the clock and Christine thought he would say the same, but instead, he asked if he could use her vid console to make a call.

She gave him a puzzled look as the door closed behind Nyota, but she showed him where the console was. Then as she gathered their mugs and took them to the sink to rinse them, she heard a child's voice. "Daddy! We went to the movies tonight and I thought we must have missed you."

"Hi, sweetheart," Len replied, his voice much gentler than Christine had ever heard. "What movie did you see?"

Joanna rattled off something that Christine didn't follow, but then the girl asked, "Daddy, where are you? That's not your room."

Len cast a furtive glance in Christine's direction. "I'm with a friend."

"Oh. Is it that new friend Mr. Jim was talking about?"

Len was biting the inside of his cheek now, either to keep from laughing or scowling. "Yes, actually."

"Can I say hi to her?"

He turned to Christine as though he didn't know she'd been watching the whole exchange. "Christine, would you like to say hello to my daughter?"

Trying not to laugh, she said, "Sure."

When she came into view of the camera, the little girl was smiling brightly. "Hi!" she said. "I'm Joanna."

"Hi, Joanna. I'm Christine," she replied. "Your dad and I work together."

"Are you a doctor or a nurse?" Joanna asked.

"A nurse."

"Good, because I want to be a nurse when I grow up."

"Good for you," Christine said.

"And then I'm going to join Starfleet like Daddy!"

"Jo, why don't we focus on kindergarten first?" Len said dryly, and Christine recognized that tone. He'd used it on Jim more than once.

Joanna's grandmother appeared then to get the girl off to bed. She spoke to her son, of course, which led to Christine being introduced to her and an attempt to explain why Len was there. When the call ended, Christine planted one palm on the desk and looked down at McCoy. "Why do I think Jim's not the only one marching us down the aisle now?"

He laughed, a real, full laugh that made Christine smile. "Heaven forbid you ever meet my mother," she added, patting him on the shoulder.

Len got up and followed her to the kitchen, helping her clean up even though very little of the mess was his to clean. "Joanna's a doll," she said idly.

"She talks back more than dolls are supposed to."

He held up a glass and she pointed at the high cabinet it was supposed to go into. That was the advantage to tall male friends, she supposed. She'd gotten up on her toes to get that glass, and Len put it away easily. "I had a doll when I was little that had an extremely realistic personality chip," she remarked.

"Yeah, I'm trying to talk everyone out of giving those kinds of dolls to Joanna. I think they're creepy."

Christine didn't say it, but she agreed. She'd thought that even as a little girl.

After a quiet moment, she said, "She looks like you, you know."

"Yeah, that's not going to end well for her."

Christine grinned. "I don't know. Maybe you'd make a pretty girl."

He gave her a look, that look which she'd learned would send mere mortals scurrying away from him. Christine, of course, was hardly scared of him. "Chris, we're both in training to join an organization that routinely makes first contact with other species who might be in possession of the kind of technology that could spontaneously swap a person's gender," he said. "I'd appreciate it dearly if you didn't make jokes about me being pretty as a girl."

She merely smiled. "Oh, did I not mention that time on the _Dallas_?"

" _No,_ " he said. "No, I am not here to listen to more insane stories about your life on that soap opera of a ship!"

He left the kitchen – she'd finished putting away the dishes while he ranted – and scooped up his jacket dramatically. It was getting late and she probably should let him go, but instead Christine leaned her hip against the counter and pouted at him. "It's a really good story."

He wasn't angry; already she could tell when that was real and when it was for effect. "I'll see you in the morning, Chapel," he said with a half-hearted glare.

"All right," she said airily. "It's not like Doctor Puri swore me to secrecy or anything."

That caught his attention. "Doctor Puri?"

She shrugged. "He got better."

With an exaggerated sigh, Len sank down in the arm chair again. "Talk, woman."

Christine sat in front of him on the old trunk and gladly obliged him.

Her apartment turned into a frequent hiding place both for Uhura and McCoy as time went by. Both of them were hiding from Jim, who eventually figured it out and wanted in on the deal. Jim claimed in his usual fashion that he was madly in love with Christine and couldn't bear to be away from her for more than two days together, but really, he was something of a food snob and the food in the dorms was unbearable. Gaila knew about their hiding place all along and came because she didn't want to be left out.

So on evenings when she wasn't on shift and didn't have a mountain of studying to do, she usually had one or more of them there around suppertime. Jim, when he wasn't flirting with the younger women, focused all that energy on Christine and her cooking. It started with watching, then moved to questions, and ended with her teaching him what she was doing.

They started simple, with knife skills, something Len made dire predictions about. Christine had, however, taught nieces and nephews how to get around a kitchen without using a replicator, so she started Jim with carrots and a case knife, saying he could move up to the real thing when he proved he wasn't a danger to himself and the community. Once he'd mastered knives and how not to kill people with them, she taught him about cooking eggs and making yeast bread from scratch and breaking down a chicken. He learned to make biscuits and barbecue and even beignets. Eventually he would just show up at her apartment with a bag of groceries, and he'd cook for whoever showed up that night.

Those nights taught Christine a lot about her new friends. Gaila would always choose pizza or soups or casseroles, and it took Christine a while to realize that it was because she liked the mix of textures. Gaila wanted to experience as much at one time as possible. Uhura's tastes were more streamlined and minimal, but occasionally something quite rustic would catch her attention.

Len, being a Southern boy, liked exactly the things she expected him to like. He claimed he kept coming back because her apartment was the only place in San Francisco where he could find sweet tea. That first Christmas, when she started feeling incredibly homesick, Christine started making candy, starting with familiar things like fudge and peanut brittle and caramel. Then she turned to divinity, a pure white, meringue-like candy mixed with pecans. It was something not even many Southerners recognized anymore. The confection amazed Nyota and Gaila and Jim. Len's eyes went wide recognition when he saw the candy, though, and the look he gave her when he tried a piece made her blush.

She soon discovered that despite being something of a picky eater, he was willing to try anything so long as she'd cooked it. That sort of trust was a little humbling, even though it was also a bit trivial. It was just food, after all, but she remembered how Roger had never wanted to try anything new that hadn't been prepared by a five-star restaurant.

But it was Jim who surprised her most. Not that he'd eat anything – she'd long ago pegged him as the type – but that he was willing to _cook_ anything. He was just as adventurous with a knife and skillet as he was in a bar fight. He was persistent, too. After several months of trying, he learned to copy her deft touch with pastry. His first attempt at quiche from scratch was an utter disaster, but he laughed as he disposed of the mess and started planning his next attack.

And every time he was there without Len, he'd say that he needed to get home before Bones got the wrong idea about them. It bothered Christine more than a little. Not that she wanted to get involved with Jim – the thought made her giggle more than a woman of her age was supposed to admit to – but the thought that Len was jealous was occasionally unsettling to her. Len had never made a move, never done much more than look and banter. The details she knew about his divorce were unpleasant, and she couldn't imagine that he was looking to get involved with someone new right now.

One night, when it was just Jim and Christine, they sat on her sofa and talked while they waited for Jim's latest experiment in soufflé to cook. "So I know why Bones is so jumpy about getting into a relationship," he said, seemingly without hesitation. "But why haven't you made a move yet?"

Christine frowned at him. "Who says I'm interested? Seems like I spend a lot more of my downtime alone with you."

"If you were interested in me, we'd have spent a few nights having fun and then gotten bored," Jim pointed out, and he was probably right. They flirted occasionally, but it was more a matter of personality than attraction. "So my question stands. I know about his divorce and his kid and why he's so skittish about getting involved with someone. What about you?"

Christine sighed, resigning herself to the fact that she couldn't avoid the question until the oven timer went off. Jim Kirk was not just persistent about cooking. "I was in a relationship before I came back to Starfleet," she replied. "It ended badly."

"His fault or yours?"

She shrugged slightly. "He proposed to me the night I was going to tell him I'd gotten into the Academy again." She had told Len as much the night they met, but not much else. "He was older than me. Always thought he knew what was best."

Jim frowned at her. "I'm surprised you'd put up with that."

"How many girlfriends have you had?" Christine asked. "And I don't mean how many girls have you slept with." He hedged with his best smile. It did sidetrack her. "That, by the way, is why Uhura isn't interested."

"What, am I supposed to sit around waiting for my one true love?"

Christine rolled her eyes. "Someday, Jim, someday."

He nudged her foot with his. "We were talking about you, not me."

"I was younger than you, I think, when I started seeing Roger," she explained. "He was fifteen years older than me."

"Christine Chapel!" Jim exclaimed, feigning shock. The oven timer went off and he hopped up to get the soufflé out of the oven. It smelled good this time, which was an improvement over his last attempt. "Come on," he said, setting it on the bar. "Soufflé waits for no man."

They started into it, and for a few minutes they talked about the soufflé, what had gone right and what could have been better. Jim was pretty good at analyzing his own work, which never ceased to surprise her. But doggedly he turned back to her love life. "Where were we? Oh, right. Mr. Not-So-Wonderful is nearly old enough to be your father. What was he?"

"Medical archaeologist," she replied. "When it all started, I thought he was interested in me because I was mature. In retrospect, I was smart enough to make him look good and young enough not to realize that was what he wanted."

"So getting involved with, say, a doctor when you're a brilliant nurse makes you nervous that you'd make the same mistake again."

"First of all, you're freaking me out, making all this sense," Christine said. "Second... Yes. Third, Len's a friend. I'm not going to mess that up."

Jim poked at the soufflé with his spoon and was silent for a while. When he did speak again, he seemed to change the subject. "He's afraid of flying, you know. Well, afraid of dying while flying, but I think that qualifies."

"Len?" Christine asked. When Jim nodded, her eyes went wide. "And he joined Starfleet?"

"He'll get over his fear of flying, won't he?"

That made her frown. She also wanted to find the professor he'd had for intro to psych and slap him silly for passing Jim. "Are you trying to say I should jump into a relationship to get over the fear of it?"

"No," Jim replied. "Just saying if sex is going to ruin the friendship, the friendship wasn't going to last anyway. There's really nothing to be afraid of."

"And you know this because...?"

"I'm highly observant, Christine," he said, resting his chin in his palm and waggling his eyebrows.

Jim didn't bring up the subject again, but his words stayed with her for a long time. The truth was, she wasn't sure what she felt about Len. He was attractive, certainly; that much she had acknowledged over their first dinner together. He was amusing and even charming under that gruff exterior sometimes. There was a lot about him that she liked, and she suspected that given time it could become more. But the heart was rarely rational no matter how much science she inhaled. Even though she knew that Len was not Roger, memory held her back.

She never doubted, even now, that Roger had loved her. She just wasn't sure that Roger was capable of loving anyone as an equal. He'd spent his life regarded as exceptional, and in personal relationships he still held to that. It had taken Christine a long time to see the patterns in his behavior. His compliments were never unguarded. He often charmed his way into favors he rarely repaid. And everything was eventually about him.

Jim was right about one thing. In retrospect it was difficult to understand why she had put up with it all. All in all, though, she had enjoyed being with Roger. It wasn't until after she realized how little respect he had for her as a fellow scientist that she turned a more critical eye to him. So getting involved with another man who was brilliant and driven – two words which might describe a certain grumpy surgeon from Georgia – was, rationally, not the best idea she'd ever had.

At least it seemed that Jim had not broken her confidence. The next time Christine and the girls bumped into them, Len didn't seem like he knew anything had been said, and she was happy to keep it that way for now.

The two groups bumped into each other often. Between that and meals in Christine's kitchen, it seemed like they could rarely go more than a day without eating together. In fact, it happened enough that Christine confronted Len about it one night when they were both working the late shift at the infirmary. He looked annoyed and blamed it all on Jim.

"Honestly, you're a grown man, Doctor," she said, as she held a squeamish patient down by the shoulders. "I can't imagine Jim's really dragging you to all these places against your will."

"Mr. Sulu, this'll be a lot easier if you stop resisting," Len said to the patient. "Chris, do I need to get someone with more upper-body strength?"

"It hurts!" the patient yelled uselessly.

Len pinned her with a look, and she rolled her eyes. "No, Doctor, you don't." She hiked herself onto the biobed and laid her forearm across the patient's collarbone. "Mr. Sulu, if you don't stop _right now_ , you're going to exsanguinate. Do you understand me?"

The kid swallowed hard and nodded.

"And it's not going to be my fault," Christine went on. "So I would highly recommend that you let Doctor McCoy and I do our jobs."

Amazingly, he stilled, even when Christine backed away from him. "Doctor," she prompted.

"Prep the antibiotic," he said, already working on the large laceration on the patient's forearm.

That was how he worked, she'd learned – incompetence was met with scorn, and good work was met with more work. It didn't bother her much, but she knew a number of the other nurses, especially the younger ones, were highly intimidated by him. Christine was of the opinion that they needed to get over it, as Len was an incredibly gifted surgeon and not the most ill-tempered person she'd ever worked with. On the other hand, it didn't particularly surprise her that the head nurse, who was nearing retirement and probably didn't want to deal with complaints, kept scheduling Christine and Len in the same shifts.

They sat together in the corner of the break room eating a couple hours later. Len was still going on about the patient with the twenty-centimeter gash on his arm. "Fencing," he said derisively.

"It's a noble sport," Christine replied.

"Stupid way to get your arm hacked off."

"Oh, come now, Doctor, you fixed him up."

Len sat back in his chair and smiled at her mischievously. "What amazes me is you could stay so professional with the patient trying to cop a feel."

Christine nearly spewed water all over him. "I beg your pardon?"

"Oh, so you didn't notice him trying to grab your–"

"When did _that_ happen?"

"Round about the time you held him down by the clavicle." Christine couldn't decide whether to be amazed or affronted. After all, the only way he'd have seen this was if he'd been staring at that part of her anatomy as she knelt on the biobed. In a miniskirt. Len, on the other hand, decided to poke her again with a sharp stick. "He's a kid, Christine. Besides, I'd have defended your honor."

Christine retaliated by stomping on his toes under the table. "I can defend my own honor, McCoy."

He chuckled even as he winced. "Don't I know it, Chapel."

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

  
He'd have done well to remember that. Now that he and Christine were both out of their basic classes, she had moved on to her doctoral coursework and McCoy decided to pick up a second certification in xenopathology. Jim made all sorts of noise about what a strange coincidence that was, but Len tried to ignore him. He especially didn't mention to Jim that he and Christine were studying chemistry together. The cliché would have been far too much for his Neanderthal brain to resist.

Len usually bumped into her on Tuesdays and Thursdays between the enormous chemistry lecture she was teaching and their shared shift at the infirmary. On the walk to work he often got an earful about the students and how much she did not want to teach an entry-level course ever again, and he sympathized. He'd started taking over rounds with the medical students when someone else was sick, and the ridiculous things that happened during rounds made him want to bang his head against a wall. He did not remember being that dense, but then, he was probably repressing a lot, or so Christine was trying to convince them both.

He was surprised, then, one Tuesday that she wasn't near the chemistry building. He thought about checking her office (well, cubicle), but then he saw the noticeboard near the entrance and remembered that she'd said something about canceling her lecture in favor of more lab time. She was probably at the infirmary already. One of the nurses had just gone on maternity leave and the staff was a bit shorthanded. Len made the walk through the brisk winter air to the infirmary, and he found that Christine hadn't quite made her way into the building yet.

She was standing at the doors with a cadet Len didn't recognize. For a second he frowned. Obviously she didn't need his permission to have other male friends, but he thought he knew everyone Christine was on friendly terms with. And this guy was definitely standing too close to her to be a stranger.

As he got closer, he realized that she was trying to back away from the guy, and he wasn't letting her get any distance. Len picked up his pace without meaning to, but he wasn't quick enough. The man suddenly grabbed Christine and kissed her. Running toward them, Len shouted, which got the attention of several people passing by.

He should have remembered that Christine could take care of herself, though. She managed to push the cadet back and then she punched him in the face. McCoy got there just as blood started pouring from the man's nose and Christine backed up straight into Len.

She jumped about six feet as they made contact, but her alarmed look quickly turned to relief when she recognized him. "Len," she said, and then she tried to flex her hand and winced.

One of the security guards inside the infirmary ran out of the building and grabbed the cadet, hauling him inside. Len collected the PADDs Christine must have dropped at some point in the altercation. "Come on, let's get you inside," he said gently, holding them out to her.

She shook her head, cradling her injured hand in the other. "Is it possible to break fingers doing that?"

"As hard as you seem to have hit him? Yes," he replied, ushering her into the building.

Half an hour later, they had both told their versions of events to the Academy's security force, and they found an empty exam room with the appropriate equipment. Christine sat on the biobed, holding out her injured hand to him while resting the other on her bare knee. "Aren't you cold?" he asked.

"If Starfleet cared about comfort, they wouldn't have authorized this kind of uniform for everyday wear," she replied. "Some of us will wear what we like whether we're warm enough or not."

That told him almost nothing. "So you're saying..."

"Len, I don't know if you've noticed this, but I have fantastic legs."

He snapped his gaze up from her injured hand. She was giving him that look that he was resolutely not calling her come-hither face. Well, he supposed, two could play at that game. "Not being dead, Christine," he said, exaggerating his drawl a little, "I had in fact noticed."

"Thought so," she replied smugly. For that retort, McCoy tested the motion in one of her fingers and she gasped in pain. "What was that for?"

"Seeing if it was broken."

"Which it obviously is. You could have used a scanner!"

"Nah, I like doing some things manually."

"It's no wonder your patients claim you torture them."

Still, she fell silent while he continued his examination, other than the little shuddering breaths she took. He was close enough to her that he could feel her breath warm against his face now and then. Before he could stop his brain from going there in front of her, he was wondering how else to touch her to get her to react like this, but not from pain.

Len risked a glance at her face. If he wasn't imagining things, she was blushing. She had broken bones which he was examining and she was blushing. If he'd already headed off into dirty thoughts, where was she?

He cleared his throat, not trusting his voice off the bat. "Looks like you just broke these two," he said, indicating her middle and ring fingers. "I can wrap them up if you want."

"I'm right-handed," she replied. "I sort of need them functioning now."

"I figured." Len reached for the regenerator and got started. Not wanting to let his mind wander in front of her again, he asked, "So who was that guy?"

She rolled her eyes. "One of the graduate assistants for my class," she replied. "Real prodigy, so he's probably going to get off with a slap on the wrist."

"And a nose broken by a girl," Len pointed out, even as he resolved to annoy the disciplinary committee as much as he could to get the guy punished properly.

It made her smile a little. "It'll be a good story, at least. Once I'm not angry about it."

"I'm sure Jim will enjoy it."

"Are you kidding? He'll probably think it's hot."

Len refrained from pointing out that that was what he meant, more or less.

* * *

  
That night, Christine had her first dream about Leonard McCoy. When she abruptly woke during it, she was gasping, incredibly aroused, and quite certain she would never be able to look him in the eye or see his hands without blushing.

It made sense, she decided, after she'd gotten out of bed for a glass of water. She'd usually populated her conscious fantasies with men she knew. The only thing that made this one different was that she normally restricted her fantasies to men who weren't also friends. It was bound to happen eventually, though, and she was a little surprised that it hadn't happened already in the more than two years they'd known each other. Her subconscious was simply filling a need with the nearest male she found attractive.

Right.

Her rationale already sounded completely inane by the time she'd made it back to bed.

The next evening at dinner, Gaila made yet another tone-deaf remark about Len, and this time Christine blushed. Nyota and Gaila both jumped on that, demanding to know what happened. "Nothing!" she protested. The two younger women kept up their stares. "Len fixed my hand for me yesterday after the thing with Collins."

"And?" Nyota pressed.

"And I may have had a dream last night," Christine answered, knowing she was red as a lobster now.

"Ooh, do tell," Gaila said, interlacing her fingers under her chin.

"I am not telling!" she whispered.

"That's okay," Nyota said, to Christine's relief. Of course, she shouldn't have been so quick to trust. "I'm sure we can guess what it was about."

She smiled at Gaila, who held her hands out and wiggled her fingers. "I'd play doctor with him any time." Christine let her head hit the table, and Gaila asked in alarm, "Did I say it wrong?"

"No, you said it right," Christine muttered. "You're never going to let me live this down, are you?"

"Depends," Nyota said, getting a little more serious. "You like him, don't you?"

"Of course I do."

"As more than a friend?"

"Well, I wouldn't kick him to the curb if he asked me."

Nyota shrugged then. "Seems like it was inevitable, then."

"Just be glad you don't have a roommate," Gaila said. "This one talks in her sleep. I don't know how many times I've woken up to 'oh, oh, S-'"

Nyota clamped her hand over Gaila's mouth before the name could come out. Christine looked at them in amazement. "Pining after someone, dear?" she said, doing her best impression of her mom.

That stopped the conversation pretty effectively, although she suspected Nyota was employing some sort of coercing tactics on Gaila. Even so, when they left the restaurant, Gaila made noise about it being the one time McCoy and Kirk didn't show up at their table halfway through the meal. Christine decided to count her blessings.

That one fantasy wasn't the last, of course. Occasionally she even thought about him that way consciously, and eventually she got to the point where it didn't feel uncomfortably weird with him afterward. She compartmentalized, separated the man in her imagination from the real thing. Whenever her thoughts strayed in that direction, she reminded herself that with Roger, she had jumped way too fast from friend and colleague to lover. She wasn't going to make that mistake this time around.

Besides, she wasn't even sure if Len was interested in her that way. Sure, he flirted with her, but for some men, that was just a way of life. He was not and would never be Jim, but outside of work, when lives weren't in his hands, he could be quite charming. It was just who he was.

He looked at her like she was crazy a little more often, but other than that, things didn't change between them. But they didn't go out by themselves again until three months after the thing with Collins, when Christine learned the lengths Len had gone to in order to get the cadet punished for his actions. In an attempt to thank him, she took him out to a bar Jim hated for a celebratory drink.

They were in a booth in a dark corner of the bar for a couple hours, talking about things they missed from home and what to expect from deployment and which people they'd rather not spend five years with. At the end of his second beer, Len rolled the neck of the empty bottle back and forth between his thumb and two fingers. She looked away, not needing any more grist for her imagination. "So I heard something interesting the other day," he said.

"What's that?" Christine asked, sipping at her drink.

"You were offered Miyazaki's job." Christine just raised a brow. "Fine. Miyazaki interrogated me about how to get you to change your mind."

She shrugged. "I don't want to be head nurse at the Academy. Not now," she replied. "I know it's a prestigious appointment, but it would make it dramatically more difficult to finish my doctorate in a reasonable amount of time. Besides, about ninety percent of Miyazaki's job is administrative. I still like working with patients."

He looked like he was going to make a smart remark, but thought better of it. "How's deployment going to make the doctoral process?"

"By that point I'll just have my dissertation to write, and I can do that anywhere I have access to decent lab equipment. As long as they don't stick me on a rusting bucket I'll be fine." After another drink, she added, "Granted, I'd take a head nurse spot on a ship, but after turning the Academy post down, I probably won't get one."

"You might be surprised."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing," he replied. "I have no additional information. That's one of those things you say when you don't know how to respond."

Christine still narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm on to you, McCoy. You've already admitted that superiors come to you to talk about me."

He rolled his eyes and ordered another round.

They were slightly tipsy on the walk home, which would have accounted for why Len insisted on delivering her to her building, except that he always did that. At the entrance, she hung back from the door. "You forgotten how to get in?" he asked.

"No, just don't want to go inside yet," she replied.

"You've got goosebumps on your legs."

"Sweet of you to notice."

Len smiled a little, but he looked a bit awkward. "Look, ah, my daughter's arriving tomorrow. Her birthday's next week and her mom agreed to send her out here for the weekend."

"Oh, that's right," Christine said, though she wondered why he was telling her this.

"She wants to meet you," he said rather hurriedly. "I'd blame Jim for reminding her about you, but Jo's pretty bright. She might have remembered anyway."

Even a little drunk and embarrassed, he was still obviously proud of his little girl. "Well, what do you suggest?"

"How about that pizza place, for lunch the day after tomorrow?"

"Sounds great." Without thinking of it much, she reached for his hand to squeeze his fingers. But then his thumb brushed her knuckles before she let go.

She thought of three months ago when he'd healed her broken fingers, of a thousand times before that when she'd noticed his hands, and of her idle fantasies of him touching her. Suddenly her imagination hovered on the edge of prescience, more real and possible than she'd ever expected. Everything seemed to shift, like she'd stepped into an Escher painting and she no longer knew with certainty which way was up.

"Christine?" Len said, sounding concerned.

She stepped back toward the door, which slid open behind her. "Thanks again," she replied. "Good night."

Once, just before the door closed, she glanced over her shoulder and found him watching in confusion. All she could hope as she trudged up to her quarters was that the encounter in the entryway would make more sense when she was sober again.

It didn't, of course. Sobriety did absolutely nothing for her, and in fact might have made things worse. When they met for lunch, Len was acting strange, even considering the little girl hanging on to his hand. Jim was with him as well, which meant they weren't going to get a chance to talk about the other night, even if they'd wanted to, which she was sure they didn't.

Joanna gave her a big hug as soon as they were formally introduced, telling her that Daddy talked about her a lot. "Daddy gets prodded by Jim into talking about you a lot," Len corrected. Christine tried to conceal her smile.

Jo took to Christine like a duck to water, although it was obvious that Jim was her favorite. After they'd finished eating, Jim suggested they head to a children's museum a mile away, so Christine took Joanna to the restroom first. When they came back, Jim and Len were in the middle of an argument that stopped abruptly when Jim saw Christine approaching.

She held back a sigh, not wanting Joanna to notice, but she was already starting to hate this.

On the way to the museum, they passed a pet shop and Joanna convinced her dad to stop and look in the windows for a while. Jim pulled Christine ahead a few yards. "What's going on, Chris?" he asked.

"What are you talking about, Jim?" Not that she didn't know.

"You and Bones won't look at each other," he replied. "Did you have a fight?"

"No, it was nothing like that," she said, not sure why she was humoring him.

"Okay, did you finally make out?"

Christine rolled her eyes. "No."

"You two are hopeless," he said, and she realized that he wasn't teasing, for once. "You took him out for a drink the other night. What happened? Did he make a move and you shoot him down?"

"It wasn't even..." She sighed in exasperation. "I grabbed his hand for a second and –" She stopped short, not sure how to explain the warmth of his fingers in the cool night air or the tenderness of his touch or that hurt look on his face as she ran from him. "It was just weird, Jim."

Jim shook his head. "Only you two would get this weird about holding hands."

Christine tended to agree with him, but it had been the capstone of an evening that was maybe a date. She couldn't be sure anymore. Her intentions had been just a nice evening away from their usual crowd, but wasn't that half the definition of a date? Sure, there were other factors in that definition too, but she knew on her side that the interest was all there, and there were these moments when she would catch Len looking at her in a way that told her he wanted her too.

They got a moment mostly alone inside the museum, while Jim was crawling through some exhibit with Jo. "Look, about the other night," Len said hurriedly, "we were a little drunk, right?"

Christine looked at him sharply, and she couldn't tell whether he was hoping she'd agree or disagree. But Joanna came running toward them before Christine could answer. It was just as well, because she didn't know what to say.

* * *

  
Joanna fell asleep on Len's lap that night, and even though she was very warm, he was reluctant to put her to bed. He didn't regret this visit, but there was something bittersweet about only getting to see her for these brief snatches. It didn't help that he knew Jocelyn was seeing someone, and at some point there might be a new father figure in Joanna's life. Len didn't like the idea of sharing.

Jim entered the room quietly for once in his life. "You did a number on Christine, by the way," he said lowly.

McCoy snapped his attention to his friend. "What are you talking about?"

"Whatever happened the other night that you're not talking about."

Len closed his eyes as Jim got himself a glass of water. "We were drunk. And really, it wasn't anything to write home about."

"First of all," Jim said, gesturing with the hand holding the glass, "you and I have been drunk before, many times. You were not that drunk. When you get that drunk, no one can understand you through that drawl." Len might have been offended by that if it weren't true. "Second of all, nothing to write home about? You're both resisting way too much for this to be nothing."

The thing that made Jim even more annoying than normal was that he was right. Something had happened that night and Len couldn't account for it, or at least not how they were acting about it. They were both adults, way too old for this kind of behavior. But then he thought about the evening they'd met, nearly two years ago now, when he'd talked about Jocelyn and she'd mentioned the long-term relationship she had just ended. She had mentioned Roger Korby since then, and he knew they'd both come out of similar situations. They'd both been burned, and to a degree it was easier to pretend nothing was happening than to risk getting hurt again.

Jim dropped the subject, but he didn't help Len avoid Christine. If anything, he was all the more determined to get them to spend time together, even if it wasn't alone. Still, weeks went by before they could look each other in the eye, and even longer before they would speak to each other outside of professional contexts. They spent no time alone together for months, and Len was surprised a little by how much he missed her company. He'd been surprised when he missed waking up next to Jocelyn, but this was different. Jocelyn had betrayed him in the worst way he could imagine, yet it took him a long time to unwind her from his life.

Christine wasn't like Jocelyn. It didn't take a neurosurgeon to realize that, and he happened to be qualified in neurosurgery. But in the two years they'd known each other, she'd become part of his life in a way he didn't really understand until after they abruptly stopped talking. She hadn't even done anything to him, not really. In a moment of questionable sobriety he had touched her in a way that was only the tip of the iceberg. It was only after she ran from him that he realized how badly he wanted her. It wasn't just his libido talking, either, because that much he'd known for a long time.

He wanted her, everything about her. He had been down this road once before, and two and a half years ago, when he ran away from everything that had gone wrong, he'd told himself he was never going to let a woman do this to him again. Yet here he was, turned upside down because Christine Chapel was brilliant and gorgeous and annoying and damn near perfect.

And he'd unsettled her too. That scared him more than anything else, because he knew he couldn't get involved with her casually. Unrequited pining he could deal with, but the possibility that this wasn't unrequited made his head spin with the ways this could all go horribly, horribly wrong.

A few months after they'd stopped talking, they wound up at the same Indian place one night. Len could have sworn that Jim and Gaila planned it that way. He and Christine even sat next to each other, but said very little the entire night. Gaila looked mystified and Jim looked like he wanted to hit something. Or someone.

Uhura kept giving them funny looks but said nothing about the situation. Slowly, it occurred to him that somehow – probably through Christine – he knew Uhura was sort of seeing someone, in a convoluted way that almost certainly meant she _shouldn't_ be seeing this person. She was also Christine's friend and pretty level-headed even though she was ridiculously young.

After supper, Uhura begged off of any further activities, saying she was meeting someone back on campus. She shot Len a quick look, which confused him until he realized she was trying to give him an out. "I'll walk with you," he said. "I've got a paper due day after tomorrow and I haven't finished the first draft yet."

Jim opened his mouth to protest, but shut it when Uhura glared.

The group split, Christine and Gaila going somewhere with Jim while Len and Uhura headed back to campus. "Thanks for that," he said quietly.

She rolled her eyes. "I know what happened between you and Christine. You're an idiot."

He let out a testy sigh. "I'm sure you don't know the whole story."

"The two of you freaked out because you're attracted to each other but too stubborn and scared to do anything about it."

Len blinked several times before he could speak. "That's... oversimplified."

"Really?" she said, stopping to stare at him. "Tell me what I've missed, then."

He closed his eyes for a few seconds before heading up the hill again. "You are way too young for this."

She followed close behind him, protesting. "Okay, so you're attracted to her and she's attracted to you, but you're both letting yourselves get blinded by complexity. Let me tell you, McCoy, every relationship is complex."

"What could you possibly know about that?"

"The man I'm meeting tonight? He was one of my professors until about six months ago."

At the top of the hill, Len stopped again and stared. "Are you trying to get him fired?"

"We've been discreet," she replied with narrowed eyes. "But yeah, I know what it's like to be in a complex situation."

"Look, kid," he said, as gently as he could manage, "I don't know what's going on with you and this guy, but I've been through this before."

"No, you haven't," she pointed out stubbornly. "Christine's not your ex-wife, McCoy. And I'll bet you're not the same person you were when you met your ex-wife, either." There she paused and seemed to deflate slightly. "But tell me, is she worth the risk?"

He had no answer to that, not then. But as the days passed, he thought about it more and more. Uhura was right about one thing. He'd been an idiot, and now it might be too late to fix things. Len considered a multitude of approaches, ranging from offering to start their friendship over to kissing her senseless in a supply closet. Predictably, though, reconciliation came after Christine pissed him off without any idea that she'd done anything at all.

Doctor Puri, whom Christine had served with on the _Dallas_ , had spent a year in one of Starfleet's Europe facilities. He was back in San Francisco now because he'd been assigned chief medical officer of the _Enterprise_ by Captain Pike. Len wasn't overly fond of the man, but Christine spoke well of him professionally.

About three weeks after Puri returned, the man cornered McCoy in the infirmary's locker room as he was coming out of a surgery. "That was some good work in there, McCoy," Puri said.

Len tried not to stiffen at the praise, automatically bracing for the bad news that usually followed it. "Just doing my job, Doctor," he replied.

"I'm sure you know I'm filling the roster for the _Enterprise_ 's maiden voyage," the other man went on. "You don't have a reputation for being easy to work with, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in a doctor on a starship. It requires discipline, and everyone says you have that in droves. Nurse Chapel gave you a rather glowing recommendation, in fact."

"Chapel?" he repeated.

Puri nodded. "She talked like you knew each other rather well."

"Yeah, we – we know each other," he said, wondering what in the world Christine was doing, talking to this guy about his deployment.

"So what do you say, Doctor? Senior medical officer aboard the _Enterprise_?"

Len told him he'd get back to him the next day, like he had other offers to consider. In reality, all he could think about was the fact that Christine, after months of barely talking to him, was apparently pushing for his assignment to a starship. Was she mad at him? Worse, was she trying to get rid of him?

He'd gotten himself so worked up by the time he reached the nurses' lounge that he completely forgot how inappropriate this was. He just burst into the room, saw her laughing with one of her colleagues, and said, "Chris, come with me. Now."

She opened her mouth, probably to protest his treatment of her, but he stared at her in a way that gave her no room to argue. She got up from the couch and followed after him into an empty exam room down the hall. "Len?" she prompted, sounding concerned.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

Now she was looking at him like he'd gone crazy, which he probably had. "I'm on break."

"I just had a little chat with Doctor Puri," he went on. "You're trying to get rid of me, aren't you?"

"What?" she sputtered. "Len, have you lost your mind?"

"In the last three months, Chris, I can count on one hand the number of times you've initiated conversation with me. I didn't do anything, and I refuse to be held accountable for what happens in your brain!"

She leaned away from him, blinking several times. "What in the world does this have to do with Puri talking to you?"

He stepped in closer; she took a step back and that bothered him so much he wanted to reach out and grab her. "He wants me on the _Enterprise_. He said you recommended me." She took another step back from him, and this time he didn't follow. "If you don't want to have me around anymore, that's fine. I can stay away from you. But have the decency to say it to my face."

He managed to startle himself with that, remembering how he'd found out about Jocelyn's affair secondhand, how she'd never really had the guts to _say_ to him that it was over. Feeling a little overwhelmed, Len made for the exit, but Christine grabbed his arm and stopped him from leaving.

"Len," she said, "Puri asked me to advise him on his roster for the _Enterprise_ because he's having me assigned as head nurse on the ship."

"Oh," he blurted out, because the sum of his schooling couldn't come up with anything better to say. But his anger didn't abate that fast. "Well, why didn't you say so?"

"And when in this conversation did you give me a chance to get a word in edgewise?" she yelled. "Honestly, McCoy, I'm a nurse, not a telepath! And for your information, it's not like you've gone out of your way to talk to me the last few months either!"

McCoy opened his mouth to retort, but the door to the exam room opened first. "I heard yelling," Jim said, standing in the hallway. "Thought I might do a civil service and prevent a double homicide. Although the police might have fun trying to figure this one out."

"Out, Jim," Len ordered.

Jim held up both hands. "I'm just here for an allergy test. Standard thing. I think I got lost, though."

Len grabbed him by the arm and headed out with him. "Come on. I'll have fun stabbing you with things."

"Len," Christine called as he dragged Jim away. He turned them both around and saw her standing a few feet away, hanging back in the doorway of the exam room. "Do you want to know what I said to him?"

"Very much. Also, who this mysterious 'him' is," Jim said, before McCoy shook him into silence.

Christine smiled; she almost always smiled at Jim's antics. "I told him if I ever needed an operation, you're the only surgeon I'd let near me."

With that she walked away, leaving the two men staring at her. "I've got to hand it to you, Bones," Jim said, just as she rounded a corner. "Your girl has the best legs on campus."

Len started off in the other direction again, pulling Jim along. "She's not my girl, Jim."

Not yet, at least.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

  
Christine would have thought their truce would be shaky, but to her amazement, once they'd had a good argument, things seemed almost normal again. They still hadn't talked about that night or about what their relationship really was, but Len started finding her during their breaks and between the classes she was teaching. It was a relief to have her friend back.

Even if sometimes she was struck with an ache for more from him. When they had occasion to touch each other, for one reason or another, Christine willed herself not to shy away from him. In those moments, when she had the courage to meet his gaze, she would find Len watching her with an intensity that never failed to make her blush.

Soon, they began training for deployment. The Kobayashi Maru was legendary in Starfleet, and students on the medical track were required to take a run at it, which mystified most of them. Eventually Christine had decided that they did it not because they were commissioned as officers, but because doctors and nurses needed to learn, possibly more than anyone else, that there were no-win scenarios. The lessons of the Kobayashi Maru were broadly applicable.

However, while everyone knew that medical did all of the same simulations as the command track students, what was little known at the Academy was that medical's pre-deployment training involved simulations that Christine had found infinitely worse. These weren't designed to test a single student's leadership abilities, but to hone an entire team. Cadets, many from the drama group, were brought in as patients, and members of a ship's medical staff could receive specific, private instructions as the simulation unfolded. Before they got started, however, Doctor Puri asked Christine to do a tour for everyone.

"This simulator is an exact replica of Sickbay on the _Enterprise_ ," she told the group. "We can't move walls, but part of the purpose of these exercises is to determine whether or not we need to change some of the more fluid things. If you feel like something would be better put to use elsewhere, feel free to say so out loud. We're being observed and recorded. Statements like that will be reported to Doctor Puri and myself." She paused for a second, catching Len's gaze. "And no muttering. We have to be able to understand complaints to do anything about it."

The group chuckled at that, and Len made a face at her. Christine couldn't help but smile. "All right, we are currently standing in the main ward. You will notice that this room opens directly into the corridors as well as to other rooms. Believe me, this is a major improvement over previous Sickbay designs. The last thing you want in a medical emergency is a stuck door." There were some knowing looks from members of the staff who had served in space before.

"We have three rooms with doors," she continued, holding up fingers as she listed them. "Scrub room, OR, and the morgue. Scrub room and OR are upstairs on what is Deck 6 onboard the _Enterprise_. You'll notice three turbolifts large enough to transport gurneys, all located near entrances to this room. However, there are eight access tubes around the perimeter of this room alone. Do not be afraid to use them. You're all supposed to be in good physical shape anyway, so ten feet up a ladder won't kill you."

She finished leading the group around the main area of Sickbay, pointing out the entrances to the supply rooms and the smaller procedure rooms. Last, she stood before the morgue door, which was actually the simulator's exit. "A lot of our work gets done here in the main ward," she said. "We do initial scans of patients here, and in emergencies this is where we triage. It's important that we all familiarize ourselves with how this room functions. That's a big part of what we're doing here today. Any questions?"

There was some nervous shifting from one foot to the other, but no one spoke up. "All right," Christine said. "That's it for the tour, but I've got a couple things to say about how these simulations work. You all have an earpiece, as will all our mock patients. During the course of this exercise, you may receive special instructions. Follow them. If you're told to huddle in a corner screaming like a baby, do so. It's part of the simulation.

"Now, if you get killed in the simulation, you will hear a high-pitched buzz in your ear until you hit the dirt. A red light will illuminate you until you're removed from the simulator via this door," she said, pointing with her thumb to the fake morgue door behind her. "You may not leave under your own power. You're a dead body. You have to be moved by someone who's still alive."

"What if we're all dead?" one of the newbies asked.

Christine smiled slightly. "If that happens, I'm pretty sure our observers will end the simulation."

There was some quiet laughter at that, and Christine nodded to Doctor Puri. "Thank you, Nurse Chapel," he said, coming to stand next to her. "You've left me almost nothing to say."

"I do my best, sir," she told him, with just a little sass.

He ignored her, which was probably for the best. "Well, everyone, I'll add this: don't panic. Let's get started."

About five seconds later, a countdown started, and the simulation began. Captain Pike's voice filled Sickbay, telling them that the ship was struggling to get through a gravity anomaly. Something had collapsed in Engineering and they were to expect injuries shortly.

Puri barked out orders as the mock patients began to arrive. Christine spent a lot of her time making sure the new kids weren't in over their heads, stepping in when it was appropriate for the head nurse to offer her assistance. The simulation was fast-paced, but not worse than many real-life situations she'd been in. She was just thinking to herself that this was all going really well when she got special instructions in her ear.

"Nurse Chapel," said the voice, "you now have Cambridian fever."

One of the simulation's minders had approached her two days ago to confirm that she'd once been in the Academy's drama group. Christine had, in fact, played patient in several of these simulations before coming into it as a real participant. Now she suppressed a groan. This was not going to be fun.

She was currently standing alongside Len, who was treating a fake broken clavicle. It would figure that this would start when she was assisting him. Still, it had to be done. The first symptom of Cambridian fever was heavy breathing. She started slow.

It took a minute for him to notice, and it didn't escape her that he was looking at her chest as he asked if she was all right. "I'm fine," she told him. "It's just warm in here."

That was true, at least. He grumbled something about making sure she was properly hydrated before she was called away. That was a good thing, because he'd recognize the rest of the symptoms far too quickly.

She snapped at the young doctor and two nurses who'd asked for her help. They were taken aback, but moved through their problem relatively efficiently. The doctor noticed her breathing and asked if she was all right. She told him in a loud voice to mind his own business.

She started slurring her words. This time one of the nurses insisted that something was wrong. Cambridian fever tended to whip through the symptoms rapidly, so Christine ripped the mock hypospray and scalpel from the doctor's grasp and brandished them like weapons. "Get away from me!" she yelled, getting everyone's attention. "I know what you're trying to do! You're going to operate on this man for no reason! I can't let you do that!"

The doctor and nurses tried to calm her down, so Christine just started shrieking nonsense about pirates and vampires and anything else that occurred to her. On the other side of Sickbay, she heard Len yelling out instructions that no one was listening to. "Damn it, it's Cambridian fever! Someone sedate her before she strokes!"

Someone approached with a hypospray, but Christine was faster, whirling around with her own hypospray to fend him off. Len rushed over as soon as he could, but as he reached her, she heard the buzzing in her ear. The red light washed down over her, and she dropped to the ground.

Len took one look at her sprawled on the floor and rolled his eyes. He stepped over her body and began to berate the officers who'd frozen up when the paranoia kicked in. Christine sat up and watched. He was towering and impressive, even though she felt bad for the trio on the receiving end of his lecture. "McCoy, they're not all experts in alien pandemics," she said.

"Shut up, Chapel, you're supposed to be dead," he replied, barely pausing in his pontificating. "I don't care that she outranks you. When someone presents a danger to the medical staff, we neutralize the threat first and figure out what's going on later!"

His point made, Len stepped back and let the terrified group turn back to their original patient. "Come on," he said, holding out his hand, and he helped her to her feet.

"I'm not supposed to leave under my own power," she reminded him.

"Who says you are?"

With that, he abruptly swung her up into his arms. Caught off-guard, Christine squealed and wrapped her arms around his neck. They got a number of funny looks as they crossed the room, but she supposed it was better than being dragged all the way across Sickbay to the exit. His hand was warm against her thigh as he carried her, and she tried to focus on anything but that.

They reached the door and he set her on her feet. Just then, he winced and the red light came on over his head. Christine burst out laughing. She waved one palm over the sensor to open the door and grabbed his hand with her other. "Come on," she said. "One zombie to another."

She pulled him out of the simulator into the relative darkness of the observation area outside. His hand was still in hers as the door slid closed again. Christine looked over her shoulder at him, then glanced down at their hands. For a moment they paused, and Len squeezed her fingers. She let out a breath she hadn't been holding intentionally and smiled slightly.

As they made their way to an empty observation booth (it would fill up, probably, as more people died in the simulation), Christine remembered what Jim had said months ago. Only they would get weird about holding hands. It was pretty strange to have his hand in hers, but it felt good too. When he pulled away and sat in one of the chairs in the back row, she wondered what it would take to get into that situation again.

She wanted things to move faster, yet at the same time she didn't. Friendship was comfortable. Friendship was safe. Friendship didn't end with an engagement ring presented as part of an ultimatum with implicit insults to her intellect and general character. That last one was maybe a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence (or at least she hoped so), but going beyond friendship was inherently risky to said friendship, and she didn't want to lose that. Not again.

The silence stretched out too long as they watched their colleagues try to deal with a Cambridian fever outbreak in the middle of a different emergency. "Next time I'm bringing snacks," she said, unable to sit there and not say anything.

He chuckled. "Good idea. Get Jim to make those cookies with everything imaginable in them."

"He loves making those. I can't stir them after the peanut butter goes in, but I think it makes him feel manly."

She crossed her legs but then uncrossed them; it must have caught Len's attention. There was a loose thread hanging from the hem of her skirt, and with a delicate touch, he tugged it free. Christine held her breath as his fingers brushed her skin. He dropped the thread and, with only a little hesitance, laid his hand on her thigh.

The contact was amazing, and it took every ounce of will power to keep from sighing or whimpering. His eyes sought hers in the darkness, looking for permission or forgiveness. For once, Christine didn't pay attention to the voice in her head telling her what a terrible idea this was. Instead, she listened to what she wanted and laid her hand over his.

Later she would remember that there were security cameras everywhere, including in the observation rooms, but until someone else from the simulation intruded on their privacy, they sat together like that, his hand warm and rough against her skin while they laughed at their colleagues' simulated misfortunes.

After that point, little things like that started to happen when they were alone. He would brush her hair away from her face; she would fix his collar, touching his neck more than necessary. He would help her into her coat, resting his hands on her shoulders for just a moment; she would massage his hands after a long procedure. In the midst of it all, Christine no longer wondered whether or not she wanted something to happen. She wanted it, and it was happening. Now it was just a matter of when.

One winter afternoon, she was fielding questions from some first-years after her chem lecture when the world turned upside down momentarily. At the top of the lecture hall, a man with a small entourage entered. She tried to ignore them, but then the man said, "Christine."

She didn't have to look up to recognize him. That voice had taught her and charmed her and seduced her and finally ridiculed her, or near to it. She glanced up at Roger Korby and said, mostly because she could, "I'll be with you in a minute."

She made no attempt to hurry her conversation along, instead delving into some of the particulars of organic chemistry that weren't covered in this course but seemed to be of interest to the group of students. Finally, they headed away, and Roger sent his followers out of the room too. As he descended the stairs, he said, "This seems to suit you. Do you enjoy holding court with your students?"

Christine bit her tongue, knowing that "holding court" was exactly what Roger did. "That particular group is eager to learn everything they can," she replied. "I enjoy those types of students."

"I suppose you're early enough in your career that you're still teaching general courses." He got to the bottom of the stairs and looked at her expectantly. "It's good to see you, Christine."

She didn't return the sentiment. "What brings you to Starfleet?"

"I'm putting together an expedition to Exo III," he replied, not seeming to notice her implicit insult. "We're holding a fundraiser tomorrow night, and I'm hoping to convince Starfleet to support the mission. If they did, that would be one less thing I'd need to raise the money for."

Christine nodded, though that surprised her. Roger wasn't normally big on being beholden to governmental agencies. She started moving her belongings into her bag, as the next class in the hall was starting in half an hour. "Well, good luck with that," she replied.

"There's room for you, you know," he said. "You've got enough chemistry background to contribute, and there's always room for a nurse."

She'd had nearly three years to mull over the relationship she'd had with this man, and she'd done a lot of it. In her head, she knew that it was difficult to get perspective from inside a relationship, that when the heart was involved, it was easy to make excuses or simply ignore what was plain from the outside. Now, it was hard to imagine how she could have ever missed the backhanded nature of so many things he said. At one time in her life, it had been enough that Roger thought her capable. She knew better now.

Fortunately, she had a gracious way out available to her. "I've already been assigned to the _Enterprise_ ," she replied.

"You could ask to be released."

"I turned down a more-or-less permanent post here at the Academy a while ago," she said. "Turning down head nurse on a flagship would raise a number of eyebrows."

Roger's eyes widened slightly as she elaborated on the _Enterprise_ posting. He recovered from his surprise quickly enough, though. "Well, I had to ask," he said. "But you should feel free to come tomorrow night. It's at the Fairmont. Black tie."

She nodded, but she had no idea where her next words came from. "Mind if I bring someone?"

For a second time she surprised him. "I suppose not," he replied. "I'll have you added to the guest list. And look forward to seeing you tomorrow."

Christine managed somehow to get through their goodbyes without tripping over herself, but as soon as Roger was gone, she threw the rest of her belongings into her bag haphazardly and hurried out. She needed to find Len as fast as possible.

She ran into Jim first, naturally. He grinned at her harried appearance. "Hey, slow down," he said, grabbing her arm. They made a quarter turn together before Christine stopped moving.

"Can't," she said. "Do you know where Len is?"

"Afraid not. Why?"

"I need a date to a thing tomorrow."

Jim's smile reverted to Kirk the Seducer. "Oh, really?"

"My ex just dropped by and invited me to a fundraiser he's hosting, and instead of making up an excuse, I asked if I could bring someone."

In an instant, Jim's expression became quite serious. "So this is about making an ex-boyfriend jealous?"

"Honestly, Jim, I don't really know," she admitted, lowering her voice.

"Well, do me a favor, Chris," he said. "If this is just about your ex, don't drag Bones into it. I'm not sure he could take it."

"Jim," she objected.

"I'm serious. He's been pining after you for ages, and I'm pretty sure you're not indifferent to him. Just... Please, Chris. Don't ask him to do this for you unless it's him you want."

Christine blinked several times, trying to get her bearings. Jim had been teasing her about Len since the day she met him, but to hear such sane reasoning coupled with that plea threw her off-guard. "I had no idea you could be this serious," she said, trying to cover her imbalance.

"Christine," he said gently, refusing to engage the joke, "I mean it. If you just need someone to make an ex jealous, I'll go with you."

She nodded slowly and made up her mind. "Thanks for the offer."

His eyebrows quirked up. "Should I clear my schedule?"

Feeling very brave all of the sudden, Christine shook her head. "One of us has to make a move eventually, right?"

Jim smiled at that, and then he surprised her with a bear hug. "Knock him dead, Chris," he replied. "But not literally. I need him to keep track of what I'm allergic to."

She pulled away from him and then shoved him as she would a brother.

Eventually she found Len in one of the infirmary's store rooms, doing inventory. He frowned when he saw her. "What's wrong?"

"Hi," she said. "So how many favors do you owe me?" At his confused look, she added, "I need a big one, and I'm willing to cash all those in now in one fell swoop."

"Take a breath, Christine."

"I'm in trouble. Big trouble. Are you free tomorrow night?"

He raised a brow. "Do you need a getaway driver? Because Jim's really better at that kind of thing."

That made her laugh, and it relaxed her significantly. "I need a date, Len. My ex is in town and he invited me to a black-tie fundraiser he's hosting tomorrow night."

"Right," he replied, grimacing. "I wouldn't want to go alone either."

Christine reached out and grasped his arm, arresting his attention. "That's not what I'm getting at. I mean, no, I don't want to go stag to my ex-boyfriend's party, but that's not why I'm asking you."

His voice dropped to a tone that sent shivers through her. "Then why are you asking me, Christine?"

She took a deep breath and made the leap at last. "I think it's time we moved things along, Len."

She bit her lip nervously as she waited for a response. She was newly aware of how close they were standing in a place utterly unromantic but equally secluded. He set his PADD down and turned to her fully, and Christine thought she was going to melt into the floor when he touched her face, brushing his thumb against her mouth until her teeth released her lower lip. She let out a completely undignified whimper that made him smirk. "So do I," he replied, in a voice that could have commanded anything of her. Then he leaned in, surprising her with the gentleness of his kiss.

She dropped her bag to the floor with a thump and wrapped her arms around his shoulders; he took that as permission to snake his arms around her waist and pull her closer. The first kiss turned into a second, this one more aggressive. She dragged her fingernails across his scalp and he groaned, giving her leave to deepen the kiss, slipping her tongue into his mouth. She pivoted, pushing him up against the shelving as she explored his mouth, learning what he liked and didn't. He retaliated by moving one hand down her hip as far as he could reach, and then sliding under her skirt to squeeze her backside.

This time it was her turn to moan, and the kissing shifted, Len taking control of it. Before long, he was holding her flush to him with one arm as he kissed along her jaw to her ear. "Darlin'," he said, and the single word sent a tremendous rush of want and need through her whole body.

He started to worry her earlobe with his teeth and Christine decided this had to stop before they wound up having sex in a supply closet. Not that she objected entirely, but she wanted their first time to be private, not in a place where someone could burst in at any moment. "So is that a yes?" she asked breathlessly.

"Absolutely," he murmured, then pulled back slightly. "What was the question again?"

"Fundraiser. Tomorrow night."

"Right. Black tie," he said, making a face.

She smiled a little and stroked his cheek. "I'll find a slinky dress to make it up to you."

"You better."

She disentangled herself from Len and picked up her bag. "I'll send you the details later," she told him, suddenly feeling nervous again. But then he grabbed her free hand and brought her fingers to his lips, which were redder than normal. The touch both settled her nerves and excited them in a completely different way. "See you tomorrow night," she said, before she could find her courage and jump him.

She headed straight for her apartment, and as soon as she dropped her class materials inside her door, she walked across the hall and rang the doorbell. Nyota opened the door, Gaila just behind her, and smiled. "Christine," she said. "Gaila and I were about to see if you were up to going out for dinner tonight."

"How about shopping?" Christine said. "I'm in sudden need of a little black dress."

Nyota's smile turned mischievous. "He finally asked you out, didn't he?"

"Other way around."

"Yes!" Gaila cried. "Pay up, Nyota!"

Christine wasn't really surprised to find that her friends had been betting on her and Len. They had question after question as they headed out, and the three of them were looking through dresses by the time Christine finally admitted that she and Len had kissed.

"We've got to step this up, then," Gaila announced, rejecting all three of the dresses Christine had picked to try on.

Five dresses made it through their combined scrutiny and into a changing room. She picked up her favorite of the five, a shimmery pewter dress with a high halter neck and nearly no back. Once she had it on, her instincts about it were confirmed. The bodice was covered in beads in abstract patterns, and there were layers upon layers of sheer fabric in the skirt that moved voluminously whenever she moved. A single layer of the sheer grey, with a tiny bit of sparkle, started at her neck and extended all the way to the hem. She'd need taller shoes, as the skirt was dragging the floor slightly.

She opened the dressing room door and Nyota reached in to grab the other dresses. "No need for these," she said. "It's perfect, Chris."

Gaila grinned. "You'll knock him dead."

Christine frowned, remembering who else had said those words to her. "I know I didn't say that wrong," Gaila told her, exasperated.

"No, it's just that Jim Kirk said practically the same thing to me two hours ago."

"You don't want to know, Chris. You really don't," Nyota said. "Come on, let's get you some shoes and then get dinner. I'm starving."

That night, the girls stayed in her apartment later than usual, until Nyota yawned and explained that she'd been up way too early that morning to participate in Jim's third run at the Kobayashi Maru. She dragged Gaila back across the hall, leaving Christine to herself with her new dress and shoes and an excitement that kept her awake for hours, even though she told herself she was too old for this.

Or was she? Was there an age when a person was no longer allowed to have a night sleepless from anticipation?

Whatever the answer, she wound up exhausted the next day and needed a nap in the afternoon. She woke to the dulcet tones of Gaila pounding on her door while Nyota leaned on the doorbell. Gaila gasped at Christine's rumpled appearance but took her by the hand as she stormed into the apartment. "It's a good thing we're here, Christine," she announced. "Go take a shower."

"Good to see you too," Christine replied, but Gaila pushed her by the shoulders toward the bathroom.

She complied because it seemed like the only safe thing to do. When she emerged from the bathroom, freshly showered and wrapped in her fluffy robe, Nyota had fixed salad for all of them. "Don't worry about the dishes. We'll clean up," she said. "Come eat."

"Why in the world are you two doing all this?" Christine asked as she sat at her table.

"Because this is a big deal," Nyota replied. "You and McCoy have been dancing around this for years now. If we can help this go off without a hitch, it's our pleasure."

"Well, expect me to return the favor when you finally go on a date with Spock."

Nyota gaped at her, then at Gaila. "You have a big mouth."

"I've made peace with that," Gaila replied with a cheerful smile. "Eat, Christine."

An hour later, Gaila had pulled most of Christine's hair back and curled the rest, and she'd put on her new dress and shoes. She'd usually worn pink lipstick with Roger; for Len she reached for the red. She'd noticed sometime in the last couple years that he tended to stare at her more when she was wearing that shade.

He arrived at her door promptly, and she smiled softly. He looked positively dashing in that tuxedo, and was she really getting butterflies in her stomach? The stunned look on his face, though, made it even worse. "Christine, you look beautiful," he said, nearly under his breath. "Well, you always look – I mean –"

That made her blush and look down. "You look great too, Len," she replied.

He stepped inside and saw Nyota and Gaila perched on the sofa. "Getting the princess ready for the ball?" he quipped.

"Just be glad they're not insisting on pictures," Christine replied, retrieving the boutonnière she'd gotten for him earlier in the day. It was very simple, just a white rose. "Otherwise this really will feel like prom night."

"What's prom night?" Gaila asked.

Nyota groaned, and Christine grinned at Len. "Let's let Uhura handle that one," he said, his voice reverberating in his chest as she pinned the boutonnière on his lapel.

She was more than willing to go along with that. In fact, at the moment she was more than willing to kick the girls out and skip the party entirely. But they'd gotten all dressed up and it seemed a waste of a shopping trip not to go out.

They left her friends to clean up the apartment and headed into downtown San Francisco. The Fairmont was one of the city's landmarks, and a place where Christine had attended a couple weddings during her first stint in Starfleet. Len, though, had never seen it, and he seemed a bit starstruck as they entered the ballroom.

He recovered soon enough, though, to lean down and murmur in her ear. "This is going to end with us dancing, isn't it?" he said.

She looked up at him more confidently than she felt. "Well, maybe not _end_ with us dancing."

* * *

  
Jim had refrained from laughing at him while he got ready, but even though the tux fit, Len felt like he was in a penguin costume. There were so many fussy things about it and really, he was pretty sure Jim was still basking in his victory at the Kobayashi Maru, something that still made no sense to anyone not named Jim Kirk. Otherwise his roommate would have had something to say, surely.

Len wouldn't lie to himself. After that encounter in the storage room, part of him was severely tempted to go UA. He wanted her, sure, but it scared him a little that it went so far beyond just wanting her in bed. She'd offered to move beyond the friendship they'd built over two and a half years and he wanted that so badly. But Jocelyn had left him so skittish that his first instinct was to run, to disappear from Christine's life so he wouldn't have to worry about her hurting him.

Then again, he reminded himself, Christine wasn't Jocelyn. Jocelyn had always had a self-centered streak which, when they were younger, he'd mistaken for confidence and intelligence. Christine actually was confident and intelligent without running over her friends. Maybe there was hope this time. Even if this ended, maybe it would end with them still being friends.

Granted, it alarmed him a little how much he did not want this to end. And it hadn't even started yet, not really.

So he showed up at her door and promptly lost the ability to speak coherently. Christine always looked good, but he had no words to describe how beautiful she was in that gown. He'd thought about teasing her about making him dress up like this, but that was instantly forgotten. He'd dress up like this daily if it meant he got to see her looking like she did tonight.

He found himself nervous and tongue-tied as they made their way to the hotel, which was just about the last thing he expected. This was Christine. He knew her so well, so why couldn't he manage to talk to her? Of course, every time he caught her eye her cheeks turned a little pink, so it obviously wasn't just him. He found that strangely comforting.

Then, in her usual way, when he complained about dancing, the little minx suggested that this might not end with a kiss at her door and his brain stopped working entirely.

Fortunately he got back the ability to think just in time for the receiving line they found themselves in. Whatever Christine had said about this moving their relationship along, Len wasn't stupid; he knew this was about making her ex jealous too. He could play that game. Maybe not as well as Jim, but he could play that game.

They reached the head of the line, where Roger Korby was greeting his guests. He looked slightly surprised to see them. "Christine," the man said, "you look lovely. Like a Greek goddess."

Len glanced at Christine. Some deeply primal part of his psyche was pleased to see that she wasn't blushing the way she had when he had tried to compliment her earlier. "Thanks for the invitation, Roger," she said calmly. "This is Doctor Leonard McCoy. Len, Roger Korby."

They shook hands, and Len found himself under some scrutiny. "What sort of doctor?"

"Surgeon," he replied. "I'm also board-certified in xenopathology." Then, because he couldn't help himself, he asked, "You?"

"Len!" Christine said in amazement.

"Oh, it's all right, Christine," Roger said. "I've been through this ritual before."

She narrowed her eyes. "Well, again, thank you. It's always good to have an opportunity to have a nice night out."

"Yes, I imagine you're rather busy these days."

"They don't give out PhDs in chemistry just for being pretty."

That retort seemed to startle Korby, which made Len rather suspicious. That sharp wit was one of the things he noticed first and liked best about Christine. How could anyone who'd been with her for more than ten minutes not know that about her?

"Well, it was good meeting you, Korby," he said. "We probably ought to find our seats."

As late additions to the guest list, neither Len nor Christine was surprised to find themselves at a table in the back. It was otherwise empty for the moment, and McCoy took the opportunity to be nosy. "So can I ask you something?"

She knew him too well. "Does it have to do with my distinguished ex-boyfriend?"

"Yeah," he admitted.

She sipped at the champagne the waiter had poured them just after they sat down. "I was with him for three years," she said. "He was a guest lecturer in my master's program. He was brilliant and well-respected and for a while I was amazed that he wanted to be with me."

Len gave her what he hoped was a sympathetic look. "And then it stopped being amazing."

Christine nodded. "At first I figured the honeymoon was over. Relationships are supposed to be a challenge and all that. It took me a while to realize that Roger was just selfish and I was the one doing all the work."

"I know what you mean," he said with a nod. At her curious look, he elaborated. "I probably didn't put enough work into my marriage, but it's hard trying to save something when you're not sure the other person really wants it to be saved."

She looked at him long and hard, and Len held her gaze even though he knew her scrutiny could grow uncomfortable. "I don't want to be in that position again," she finally said.

"Neither do I," he replied. "I've never been good at talking about these things, but..."

When he trailed off, she took his hand. "I don't think I'm very good at it either."

He kissed her knuckles. "Maybe we can both get better at it."

Her breath seemed to stop for a moment when he kissed her hand. The same thing had happened the other day. He filed that information away for future use.

Christine pulled her hand away. "This is an odd conversation for a first date."

"I remember a similar conversation the day we met."

"Yeah, but I'm betting the food was better that night than it will be tonight."

"That barbecue was amazing," he replied. He could almost taste that sauce, heavy on the vinegar. "Maybe once this hare-brained scheme of yours is finished, we could head there for some real food."

"Not in these clothes, we're not," she told him. "Maybe tomorrow."

She smiled at him, and suddenly Len was okay with waiting.

Eventually their table filled and they were forced to talk to other people. The food arrived – and no, it wasn't nearly as good as that barbecue – and during the dessert, Roger Korby got up to "say a few words." In reality, he spoke for a good twenty minutes, and Len made smart remarks under his breath that had Christine fighting to breathe through her stifled laughter.

"That's it," she said, when Korby finally shut up and the orchestra began to play. "I was going to hold off on the dancing for a while, but you owe me."

"I'm here. I thought you were calling in all favors," he replied, pouting.

If he wasn't mistaken, her cheeks flushed slightly, but that was the only sign she gave of being off her game. "Not for all time," she shot back.

Len sighed dramatically as he rose, buttoning his jacket. Then he held out his hand. "Miss Chapel, may I have the honor?" he said, because he knew what his accent could do to her.

"My pleasure," she replied, placing her hand in his.

There were only a handful of couples on the dance floor, which made McCoy feel a little self-conscious about this. It had been a long time since he'd danced with anyone. But Christine fit in his arms so well, even if they both got a little jolt when he placed his hand on her back and remembered that her back was nearly bare. Her hand was warm in his, and they glided through the steps without too many problems, rarely breaking eye contact.

As the first song ended and the second began, she said, "Len, I have a confession to make."

He quirked an eyebrow, not sure where this was going.

"I'm thirty-four."

That made him chuckle. "Cradle-robber."

She thumped his chest lightly for that. "You wanted to know once."

"I probably wanted to mock you."

"Yes, I'm aware," she replied, with a small sigh.

He tugged her closer still, almost indecently close. There were more couples dancing and the imagined scrutiny was gone, along with some of his inhibition. It struck him suddenly that this was really happening, that this wasn't a dream he would wake from, bitter and lonely. He probably wasn't ready to say that he was in love with her, but he knew it was just a matter of time.

Christine bit her lip slightly. It gave him an incredible urge to kiss her. "Len," she said, and it wasn't an admonition. If anything, it sounded like an invitation.

"Should we head home?" he asked lowly. She looked like she was gathering her courage, and then she nodded swiftly.

They didn't talk much on the way out. Even the simplest brush of her fingers against his seemed to throw everything into a new light. By the time they reached Christine's door, McCoy's whole body was wound tight. The door had barely closed behind them when he framed her face and kissed her. She parted her lips for him with no hesitation and he groaned. He had no idea how he was going to exhibit any self-control whatsoever. As his hands moved up the bare skin of her back, she gasped and pushed herself closer, and he realized he had no desire to exhibit any self-control.

His comm suddenly buzzed. With a growl, he fished it out of his pocket and flung it in the general direction of Christine's couch. A minute later, while he was busy addressing the curve where her neck met her shoulder – there was a name for that point, he was sure, but he wasn't expending any of his energy right now trying to remember how to label any part of the human anatomy, not even Christine's – the comm buzzed again. "You should probably get that," she said breathlessly. "It could be – _oh_ – the infirmary."

"I know," he replied, reluctantly stepping back. She had a red mark on her neck already that was going to be a hickey in the morning. The sight made him want desperately to step back in and resume what he'd been doing, preferably all over her body.

But the comm buzzed a third time and Len crossed the room to retrieve it. "This better be good," he said into it.

"Bones, finally," Jim said. "Look, I'm really sorry about this, but I'm in trouble."

"Damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor, not your father!" Len yelled, a little too loud, but he was entitled to it.

"I know. I'm really sorry," he repeated, and he sounded genuine. "But I'm being called up before the disciplinary committee."

McCoy sighed heavily and hung up. "I'm sorry," he said to Christine.

"It's all right," she said, crossing her arms over herself like she was cold.

"No, it's not," he retorted. She chuckled.

"You're a good friend, Len. It's one of the things I like about you."

He crossed the room despite knowing it was probably a bad idea, and he brushed her hair back from her face, wondering if he'd knocked the curls loose and wanting to finish the job. "I'll make it up to you," he promised.

"I'm holding you to that."

She leaned in to kiss him again, and it was only with monumental effort that he kept it even remotely chaste. It had been a while since he'd been with a woman, but that didn't explain why he wanted her so much, or why she felt so right in his arms.

He forced himself to take a step back. "Good night, darlin'," he said to her, his breathing a little labored.

"Good night," she replied, and then she smiled wickedly. "Sweet dreams."

He rolled his eyes and left, because if he started thinking about his fantasies while standing six feet away from her, he was never going to leave.

He was still contemplating all the ways he could murder Jim the next morning, as his friend stood before the disciplinary committee for cheating in the Kobayashi Maru. When he wasn't thinking of that, he was thinking of Christine, and it wasn't until the distress call from Vulcan arrived that he tore his mind away from either subject.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

  
Despite what she'd said, Christine wanted to scream in frustration when Jim called. Now she was thinking about killing him and what kind of defense a jury would buy. She didn't care how contrite he sounded. In the morning she might lose her nerve.

Granted, the rational part of her brain was pointing out that if she was going to lose her nerve in the morning, it was best that she and Len hadn't actually made it to bed. Or even close to it, the irrational part of her brain pointed out. Both parts of her brain agreed on a solution, however. She changed into her pajamas, went to the kitchen, grabbed a box of fresh cookies and the bags of candy her cousin Irene had sent her two weeks ago, and marched across the hall, to Gaila and Nyota's room.

They were both alarmed to see her. "Christine, oh, honey," Gaila said, wrapping her arm around Christine and pulling her into their room. "What happened?"

Christine waited to speak until the door had closed behind them and she was slouched on the sofa. "We had a great time," she said. "We talked about what we want in a relationship and he turns out to be a terrific dancer, and we got home and we were obviously going to have breakfast together tomorrow, and then Jim had to call."

Gaila hugged her and laid her head on Christine's shoulder; Christine reached to grasp Gaila's forearm. Nyota, on the other hand, got up and went digging through her trunk. A minute later she resurfaced with a bottle of very illegal bourbon. "Cadets aren't supposed to have alcohol in the dorms," Christine said.

"Cadets aren't supposed to repeatedly interrupt my friend's love life, either." Nyota grabbed some glasses and passed them around. "Drink up," she said, pouring Christine's glass.

Christine knocked it back quickly and got into the cookies. "Chocolate therapy time," she said. As Gaila dove into the box eagerly, Christine went on. "At least Len was sorry about it."

"Are you kidding? You're gorgeous and obviously willing," Gaila said. "Of course he was sorry about it. If he wasn't, there's something seriously wrong with the man."

They went on like this for a while, drinking, eating sweets, and cursing Jim Kirk. Finally, Nyota was inebriated enough to ask an obvious question. "So why was the damsel in distress calling, anyway?"

Christine snorted at the characterization. It was perfectly apt. "He said he was being called up before the disciplinary committee."

Nyota went still for a minute, then slapped her hand against the arm of her chair. "I knew he cheated, but I wasn't sure how Spock was going to prove it," she said.

"Cheated on what?" Christine asked.

In the same moment, Gaila said, "Spock talks about Jim with you?"

Nyota made a face at Gaila, then joined them on the couch, sitting on Christine's other side. "The Kobayashi Maru," she explained. "Jim beat the simulation. Last time I tried to talk to Spock, he was busy trying to figure out how."

"Wow," Christine replied. "I wonder if Jim realizes he's a dead man."

"He will soon."

The three of them turned to other topics, which included Christine recounting basically every second of the party and Gaila pouting when she refused to give details about after the party. Christine wound up sleeping on their couch that night, too tired and wrung out and drunk to make it across the hall to her own bed. She was roused the next morning during a dream about Len – and not even a dirty one, to her amazement – by Nyota, who was quite the early riser.

Once Christine had woken up enough to realize she was awake, she blinked several times at Nyota. "Whatever it is, I don't want any," she said.

"You said last night you're supposed to be heading up to the _Enterprise_ this morning," her friend said, ignoring her. "Shuttle leaves in an hour."

"Yeah," Christine said, covering her eyes with her palms. "Yeah. I'm up."

"Saying that doesn't make it so, Chris."

"Shut up, Nyota."

Still, she managed to get off the couch after a couple minutes, leaving the remainder of the cookies with the girls as her thanks. Forty-seven minutes later, she arrived at the shuttle and met Puri. "Nurse Chapel," he said, "you're looking a little worse for wear."

"Thank you, sir. That's the name of the eyeshadow I put on this morning."

He chuckled. "Well, at least I know you're sober."

He handed her a PADD with a roster of names and tasks assigned to each of them. "This list is shorter than I expected," she said.

"The cadets were all called to a meeting of the ethics board," Puri explained. Christine didn't say that she knew what that was about, as he seemed irritated. "We'll have to make do without them this morning. If they're out in a reasonable amount of time, I'm going to see if we can't have them shipped up. There's a lot of work to be done before we ship out."

"Yes, sir," Christine replied.

So she was up on the ship when word came of the distress call from Vulcan. The medical team hadn't even come close to getting everything in order, but with the influx of crew, they were going to have to make do. Doctor Puri left her in charge of Sickbay while he got in contact with Captain Pike, and Christine wound up standing on a chair and shouting orders to a confused and worried staff. They needed to keep their hands busy, and fortunately there was plenty to do, even as the cadets joined them.

The main ward had calmed but not stilled by the time the ship jumped to warp. Soon, though, the quiet busyness of the ward was interrupted by a new arrival. She thought about chastising Len for not reporting to Sickbay a long time ago, but he was dragging Jim in with him. Had the board ruled in his favor, or was this some cockamamie scheme that was sure to backfire spectacularly? Knowing the two of them, she was pretty sure of the answer.

Christine kept out of it until Len appeared before her. Jim was conked out on a biobed. She fixed Len with a look, eyebrows raised slightly. He sighed. "No, Jim's not supposed to be here. He just looked so pathetic being left behind."

"He's not a puppy at the pound, Len," she shot back, keeping her voice down.

"I know," he said. "Look, will you tell me when he wakes up?"

After a heavy sigh, she said, "Yes. But do me a favor and get down to the lab. I keep getting reports that no one knows what they're doing."

He saluted her with two fingers, which made her roll her eyes, and left the ward. It wasn't long before he was back, claiming victory over the idiots and anarchists in the pathology lab. It was a good thing, too, because in the middle of Ensign Chekov's announcement of the situation – probably the first time any of them had heard what was going on in any detail – Jim woke up.

He immediately started ranting and raving about something while having a massive allergic reaction, the likes of which Christine hadn't seen since that time the _Dallas_ got micropollen in the air supply and no one could get through a sentence without sneezing. The situation had Len barking out orders (and her calling him "sir," which was just _weird_ considering what his hands and mouth had been doing to her eighteen hours ago) and chasing down his resisting patient with hyposprays.

Christine went back to her work, but within minutes, they had dropped out of warp and an explosion rocked the ship. Jim had said something about a trap – had he been right?

There was no time to contemplate it. Her comm buzzed and she answered it. "Chapel."

"It's Puri. I need you on Deck 6."

"Yes, sir," she replied, then turned to find the nearest nurse. "Henderson! I'm heading up to surgical. You're going to be getting injuries soon. Make sure triage runs smoothly."

"Yes, ma'am," the young man replied, and Christine headed for the access tube, seriously regretting the skirt today.

The ship seemed to be lurching more than the artificial gravity could compensate for. Christine ran on wobbly legs and was glad when she reached the ladder inside the access tube. Then, when she was halfway up, there was a sickening groan followed by a massive explosion nearby, and the door to the level above slammed down.

She hurried the rest of the way up. Someone on the other side could override the safety protocol that had sealed the entrance. Several times she banged on the door, before realizing that the panel was burning up. There were large red splotches on her palm that were almost certainly mild burns. There was a fire on the other side of that door.

Trembling slightly, she made her way back down the ladder. It was as though she'd entered an alternate reality. Sickbay was dark, lit only by emergency lights. Above the far side of the main ward, there was a hole in the ceiling. A small fire had started near the comm station and Christine shouted at someone to take care of it. The fire suppressant system must have been knocked offline. She ran the other way, hopping over debris, and stared up into what was left of the surgical suite. She could see bodies.

"Get a ladder," she ordered the ensign standing near her. "Henderson, you and I are heading up there."

"Yes, ma'am," Henderson said again, though he was clearly nervous.

While they waited for a ladder, Christine sent three of the gathered nurses to the storage room on the other side of the main ward. Fortunately not all of their surgical equipment had actually made it to the surgical suite, so as soon as they found an empty space, they would set up a new OR. She didn't say it out loud, but she certainly hoped they still had some surgeons.

The ladder arrived and Christine was the first one up. Henderson was right behind, and one of the engineers who'd been in Sickbay when the action started followed them without being asked. She coughed through the smoke and tried to figure out what had happened. There were bodies on the far side of the room, away from the fire. The pain in Christine's palm flared as she tugged at a table that had broken in several pieces and collapsed onto them. A hand grabbed her ankle and she nearly fell over in surprise. "Nurse," the man with the death grip said.

She crouched down and pulled at more of the debris. "I need you to let go," she said. The two men who had accompanied her were now helping dig the men out.

"Nurse Chapel," the man said again.

"Doctor Puri?" she said, prying his fingers from her ankle. "Doctor, we're working as fast as we can."

Henderson got the last of the large chunks of debris off of Puri and Christine gasped. He'd been impaled by something she couldn't see very well, and now there was a line of blood running out of his mouth. "Doctor," she said frantically, but he was already dead.

Christine had lost colleagues and friends before, but Doctor Puri had survived everything their time aboard the _Dallas_ had thrown at them. Somehow this mission seemed ten times more dangerous now that she looked down into the lifeless eyes of her old colleague. Still, she couldn't freeze up now. She closed his eyes and threw herself into unearthing the rest.

There were four more bodies and three still alive, badly in need of medical care. Christine hurried back to the ladder and conveyed instructions on how they were going to get those three down. She also put in a call to Engineering to get someone up there to put the fire out before it did structural damage. Meanwhile, another ladder was retrieved along with some cables, and soon they were lowering the first man down on a stretcher using a makeshift pulley system.

She heard Len enter Sickbay well before she saw him. He bellowed at a nurse to find out where she was; the harried nurse said, "Up there."

He came into view, face paler than usual, but when Christine met his eyes, he looked relieved. He must have thought she had been in the surgical suite when the explosion happened. "Help me down," she said, and he hurried around the ladders as she dangled her legs over the beam that formed one edge of the hole.

She lowered herself as carefully as she could to the point where he could take her weight. There was a rush of contact that would have been amazing in any other circumstance; his hands moved all the way up her legs and finally gripped the backs of her thighs firmly. She transferred her hands to his shoulders, ignoring the pain, and he grunted slightly as her weight shifted completely to him. Then he lowered her to the ground, gazes locked for several heartbeats even after they were no longer touching.

"Doctor Puri," she blurted out. "He was up there. He's dead."

Len nodded. "Captain Pike went to the Romulan ship."

"What?" she exclaimed. "You can't be serious."

He reached for her shoulder, but then Commander Spock was hailing Sickbay and he ran to answer it. Within seconds, Len was the acting chief medical officer. Christine looked around, assessing the situation, while Len approached her again. She was distracted, though, and grabbed a passing ensign by the sleeve. "Would you take care of the fire already?" she said, exasperated.

"Yes, ma'am," the young man said, hurrying off.

"You're scaring them," Len said lowly.

"Good." At his frown, she waved a hand. The burns on it still hurt, but she had work to do. "Never mind."

"What's the situation, Chapel?" he asked, moving along.

She ran her other hand over her hair and took a deep breath. "Deck 6 is gone," she said. "Even without the fire, there's nothing we could use. I sent some of the nurses to pull out the surgical equipment we hadn't gotten up there yet."

"Good thinking," he replied, folding his arms over his chest. "We'll get everything set up somewhere. Triage?"

"I can handle that."

"No, I meant where do we do triage?"

"Oh. In the corridors if we have to. I'm not wild about the idea, but we need the space."

Len nodded, and he touched her arm. "I'm going to need you, Christine."

"That's my job, Len." His hand was warm against her skin.

He licked his lips as he nodded again. "Then let's get to work."

Before they could really get anything done, they had to know who was there. At least the ship seemed to have calmed for the moment. Christine stood on a swiveling chair again, this time anchoring herself with a hand on Len's shoulder, and they took inventory of the staff. She'd been right to worry about surgeons. Len was the only one who hadn't been up in the surgical suite. Once they actually determined who they had, they huddled over a PADD in the darkened Sickbay and figured out who among the remaining staff could get through surgery without killing someone, if the situation demanded it.

The rest of the staff they divided as best they could. There should have been more time for this. Christine knew the nurses, but neither she nor Len had worked enough with the doctors to know where they ought to be. Doctor Puri... Doctor Puri would have known.

Her hands were shaking slightly as she thought of his fingers gripping her ankle as he died. She was a nurse; she had seen far more than her share of death. Her reaction now might be perfectly human, but she had to put that aside long enough to help others, or there would be many more deaths before the mission was over.

For better or worse, her hands were soon too busy to tremble, and she stopped noticing the pain of the burns. The wounded were pouring in now. There was no choice but to triage in the corridor outside of Sickbay. Christine had seen all of these injuries before, but never so many at once. Broken bones, lacerations, head trauma, chest trauma – it was hard to tell where to start, though people who were bleeding tended to be bumped to the head of the line. There was a huge backup, though, even after Christine sent half of the nurses helping her back into Sickbay.

"Commander Chapel?" said a voice behind her, and she turned to see a young black man in a red shirt. He had a bandage on his left arm, and he probably wasn't any older than nineteen.

"Yes, Ensign?" she prompted, reading the scan of her latest patient.

"I mentioned this to Doctor McCoy, and he said to check with you," he replied. "A lot of the engineers have advanced first aid training. Usually it's quicker to patch ourselves up and come to Sickbay for formal treatment later."

"Yes, and?"

He followed her to the next person in line. "There's several of us here with minor injuries," he said. "We just didn't have the supplies down there to deal with it. We could stick around for a little while and help with the less dire stuff."

"That's a good idea," she said. "What's your name?"

"Porter, ma'am."

"All right, Ensign Porter, gather up anyone here who can help. We'll set you up down the corridor, and I'll send Baker to supervise."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and he was off.

The system worked remarkably well, even though Christine was sure that Starfleet Medical would have thrown a collective fit at the idea. But this was an emergency. No one went by the book in an emergency.

Some of the redshirts migrated into Sickbay proper before all was said and done, helping to set up spare equipment and occasionally assisting when they were the closest to a doctor in need of help. Only once did Christine cross paths with Len. He paused to ask if she needed a break and she shook her head.

Triage had slowed down considerably by the time Jim and another man were brought in. A number of Vulcans filed in as well. Christine followed them into Sickbay without thinking of it much. Nurse Marquez stepped in front of Jim to take care of him, so Christine went to his companion. After a few seconds of scanning, the man said, "Do I know you?"

She met his eyes, something she hadn't been doing much of during the rush of triage. "I don't think so."

"No, I do know you," he said. "I'm surprised you don't remember me. Or do you hold a lot of patients down by the windpipe?"

"Well," she said, as though admitting something. She remembered him now. Fencing injury. Len had mocked him for hours. "As I recall, you were trying to grope me while I held you down by the windpipe."

He looked sheepish. "I have the right not to incriminate myself, correct?"

She smiled and looked at the name that had appeared on her tricorder. "I'll let you off the hook this time, Mr. Sulu. I'm feeling generous. Besides, it looks like this time you managed not to cut off anything important."

Within a couple minutes she was done with Sulu, and she looked at Jim. She had never seen him like this before. He was lost in his own world, and clearly things had gone very wrong.

"Jim," she said, approaching him and laying a gentle hand on his knee.

"They blew it up," he said, looking at his wrapped hand. "Whole damn planet. Imploded it, actually."

"Vulcan?" she asked, in disbelief. "The Romulans blew up Vulcan?"

He nodded. "They had some sort of platform that was drilling into the planet. We were trying to stop it, but I guess we weren't fast enough."

"Yeah, but... I don't understand."

"I don't either, Chris. But they've got the captain too, and I don't know what we're going to do to get him back."

She thought of the story of his father, a story nearly everyone in Starfleet knew. George Kirk had managed to save everyone but himself. Christine wasn't privy to Jim's thoughts – thankfully – but she could guess that the legacy of the father he knew only in a story of supreme self-sacrifice weighed heavily on him. To have failed so utterly in this first attempt to prove himself in the real world must be crushing.

"Jim," she said lowly, "you'll figure something out."

"I'm not even supposed to be here, Christine," he replied.

"All the more reason to save the day, isn't it?"

That drew a hint of a smile from him. On impulse, she leaned in and kissed his cheek. He really needed a shower. But Jim Kirk was Jim Kirk, and even in a moment like this, he couldn't help himself. "You missed my mouth there."

For that, she patted his cheek sharply. "You'll live."

An hour later, the flood of injuries had stopped. The engineers were busy enough that she fully expected more wounded later, but right now Sickbay was calm. Christine was experienced enough to know that she needed to rest when she could.

Her palm was throbbing again. There had been no time to fix it or even get a cold compress on the blisters, but she also hadn't had time to think about how much it was hurting. Now, though, she was exhausted, and as she made her way toward the exit, she decided she could take care of it just as well after she slept.

But a familiar voice called her from the CMO's office. It took her a minute to realize it was Len. Tugging at her skirt slightly, she stepped into the doorway. "Yes, sir?"

Even though he looked as tired as she felt, he fixed her with a glare. "Don't you start with that."

Christine shrugged. "You're CMO."

"Close the door," he said with a sigh.

She did as he asked mostly because she didn't have the energy to fight him on much of anything. When he gestured at the ancient sofa crammed into the room, she sat down, and he pulled the desk chair over to sit right in front of her. He had a dermal regenerator, and she knew what this was about. As she leaned forward and held her palm out to him, she asked, "How did you even know?"

"I saw you, Chris." That made her frown, because he only called her that if he was annoyed with her. "Why didn't you get someone to take care of this? Must hurt like hell."

"It wasn't that bad," she lied. He pinned her with a skeptical look but said nothing. The hand holding hers still while he worked was warm, though, and some part of her never wanted him to let go.

After a few minutes, the large burn was healed. Len set aside the regenerator and ran his fingers over his work. Christine's breath caught, which earned her a sharp look, but for once she was simply too tired in every way to mask the reason for her reaction.

"Does that hurt?" he asked, callused fingers brushing against the newly healed skin.

"No," she whispered, meeting his eyes and hoping with all her might that he understood.

Any other man she knew probably would have leaned in to kiss her. This time she wouldn't have minded that kind of directness. Not Len, though. He just held her hand in both of his for a moment before bringing her palm to his lips. Then he slid it back against his cheek, closing his eyes. As for her, the skin of her palm seemed to feel things more keenly than ever before, and the brush of the stubble on his jaw made her sigh with pleasure. "Len," she breathed.

He grasped her other hand tightly, like he was afraid she would run away from him. "I thought they meant you were with him when the fire started," he said, and after a second she realized he meant Doctor Puri. "I thought you..."

She let her fingers drift upward into his hair. "I'm here, darling," she said, using the endearment without forethought. "I'm here, and I'm not leaving you."

Christine tugged him forward just a little, and he took the hint. He was trembling ever so slightly as he brushed his lips against hers. For long moments between chaste kisses they simply rested, feeling the way the other was breathing and gently touching each other. But then he held her a little more firmly, one hand at the back of her head and the other along the side of her neck. "Christine," he murmured, sending shivers down her spine, and he kissed her once again.

This time he bit lightly on her lower lip, making her gasp, and then he took full advantage, deepening the kiss. She wrapped her arm around his shoulders as he explored her mouth, and she leaned back, pulling him with her, wanting to feel something of his weight to anchor her while the galaxy was spinning out of control around them. One of his hands drifted downward, stroking the abundance of her right leg left exposed by her boot and skirt. Broad palm, long fingers, nails kept clipped short at all times. She knew those hands so well, but this was something altogether new.

Deep, wet kisses, over and over, drove all thoughts of everything but him from her mind. "Len," she moaned when they came up for air, while his perfect lips moved down the long column of her throat.

"Shh," he whispered. "Whole damn Sickbay's out there."

That reminder was as effective as a bucket of cold water for them both. He tugged the collar of her uniform down, exposing the hickey he'd left on her the night before, but after a slow kiss to the mark, he moved to sit with her. "Come here," he said, tugging her close again while settling himself in the corner of the sofa. "We've got to sleep before something else blows up."

Christine went willingly, and Len cradled her body against his. "Are you scared?" she asked.

He rubbed her back lightly. "Terrified," he admitted. "You?"

She thought of the Kobayashi Maru and that horrible feeling in her stomach when she realized the situation was unwinnable. "I'm glad I'm not the one making the decisions right now," she said, even though it didn't give him a real answer.

He understood, though. He held her a little tighter, and Christine drifted off to the sound of his steady heartbeat.

They survived, somehow. The second medical emergency was less of a flood than the first, but Captain Pike came back barely able to stand, and she and Len spent hours and hours working on his spine, getting that _thing_ out of him. She couldn't help but remember that this was how they met. It seemed like such a long time ago, but the end result was the same. The patient survived, and they worked together seamlessly, as though they were able to read each other's thoughts.

Afterward, she offered to buy him dinner, or breakfast or lunch or whatever meal was closest. Gaila and Nyota had saved food for them (the ship hadn't been stocked or fully equipped for deployment, so that was something of a miracle), and they ate together in an empty lounge. They fell asleep together again and managed to sleep for more than an hour this time, and they weren't even woken by another emergency.

The ship had to be towed back to Earth. Christine heard the explanation for that and a lot of other things in bits and pieces, largely because she was entitled as head nurse to join the senior staff for meetings after the Romulan ship had been destroyed. It was surreal, to say the least. Jim was captain now. Christine would have laughed if it hadn't been so obvious that he was taking this seriously. During both her stints in the service, she had seen a lot of ambitious young officers, which certainly described Jim. But Jim, while having brilliant instincts, was not content to rely on himself alone. He genuinely sought the help of others. That was something many officers never learned, and she was surprised and pleased to see it in him.

At least everyone had plenty to do. As the patients in Sickbay needed to be mended and monitored, so did the _Enterprise_. The medical staff settled into a routine, and she and Len rarely had to put out fires. Yet despite the state of their relationship, they spent most of their evenings with others in public areas of the ship. So many of the people they'd spent the last three years with were dead. Even a significant portion of the crew of the _Enterprise_ was gone. After surviving the ship's maiden voyage, it was no surprise that the remaining crew seemed to huddle together.

Other nights, though, Chapel and McCoy found someplace quiet and private. In the last two and a half years, they'd talked so much that Christine was sure they had nothing left to talk about, but the shift between them seemed to break down new barriers. They talked and talked some more, and sometimes they didn't talk at all, but remembered what it was like to be in those first days of a romance, when every kiss was better than the last and every touch held so much promise.

Gradually, as the _Enterprise_ neared Earth, she came to know beyond all doubt that she was in love with him. Cliché or not, mortal peril was excellent at pointing out things she really should have figured out a long time ago.

When they got back to Earth, the crew was given seventy-two hours of shore leave, enough time for everyone to leave San Francisco, assure family members that they had survived, and get back for the official ceremonies regarding the events of their maiden voyage. Christine expected Len to take some pushing to get him out of town, as Captain Pike's condition was still serious, but Len surprised her. They parted ways just outside the shuttle that brought them planetside and he took off for Savannah. She didn't hear from him again until the next day, when she was in her parents' house in New Orleans and he sat in Joanna's room in his parents' house and talked to her for an hour on the comm.

They both got back just in time to see Jim relieve Admiral Pike of command, and afterward they and Nyota and a few others went out for a celebratory drink. Jim was already famous, which suited him very well, and he didn't notice when Christine and Len slipped away, one after the other.

Len arrived at her apartment door three minutes after she entered. They were kissing, Christine pinned against the wall, before the door slid closed again, and she wondered fleetingly if they would even make it into the bedroom. His lips trailed down her throat and his hands slipped up under her shirt and she never wanted him to stop touching her, not in a million years.

"Christine," he murmured, and she shivered, clinging to his broad shoulders. "Christine, there's something I have to say." After all they had said in the last few days, that surprised her, and she looked at him in confusion. "I just need to make this clear, before this goes any further."

"What is it, Len?" she asked, stroking the side of his neck.

He was nervous, but he had that determined look that usually heralded something insane and brilliant. "I love you," he said. "Three years ago I swore I'd never let this happen again, but I love you, Christine. I love you more than I ever thought possible."

Her knees got a little wobbly, and her heart skipped a beat even though that was physiologically impossible. She let out a huge sigh of relief and rested her forehead against his shoulder. "Christine?" he prompted, sounding worried.

"Sorry," she replied, raising her head. "It's just... I've been wondering how to tell you the same thing."

Len grinned at that. "It's easy," he lied, pulling her even closer. "I love you."

She repeated those words many times before the night was over.

* * *


	6. Chapter 6

  
McCoy left Christine's apartment the next evening when she told him she had to do laundry and she was never getting the sheets washed with him there. He arrived back at the dorm to find Kirk packing. "Bones, I found us a great apartment," Jim announced, without commenting on where Len had been for the last day. "It's three blocks from the hospital. It's big enough for me, you, and Jo when she visits."

"You're making some pretty big assumptions, Jim," he replied as he stripped out of the uniform shirt he'd worn to Christine's the night before. He needed a shower, probably. "Who says I want to have you bringing girls in all the time when my daughter's here?"

"Right," Jim drawled. "Because you didn't just spend the last twenty-four hours knocking boots with one of the finer representatives of the female population."

Len sat down on his bed. "Well, I did."

Jim grinned. "Good for you, buddy."

Jim sat down across from Len on his own bed and leaned forward. "You're coming with me, aren't you?" he said. "I need a chief medical officer."

Len hesitated slightly. "I'm more than willing to join the crew, but there's a lot of people with more seniority who ought to be CMO of a flagship."

"There's a lot of people with more seniority who ought to be _captain_ of a flagship," Jim pointed out. "I want the best, Bones. As far as I'm concerned, that's you."

He didn't wait for an answer, just got up and went back to packing. Len twisted around to watch his friend. "You sure about having a friend in your senior staff?"

"Nope," Jim replied. "But I know I'd rather have a friend to fight with occasionally than have a bunch of people who won't tell me when I'm wrong."

"When did you develop that kind of wisdom?"

"Let me tell you about this great place to think, Bones. Real exotic. It's called Delta Vega."

Len rolled his eyes and decided it wouldn't hurt if he got a start packing himself. "Do I get discretion about staffing Sickbay?"

"Yeah, as long as Chris is your head nurse."

That made him frown a little. "Aside from the fact that I'm seeing her, you do realize she outranks me, right?"

"If you're okay with and she's okay with it, I don't see what the problem is," Jim replied. "She's got one foot in medical and one in science anyway. Besides, since you're seeing her, I sort of figured you'd like to see her more than once every five years."

"Well," he said. "If she's okay with it, so am I."

"I'll talk to her," Jim replied. "I'd let you take care of it, but I doubt you're talking with her much when you see her."

For that, Len launched a pillow at Jim's head.

* * *

  
Christine, of course, was perceptive enough to guess what Jim wanted to talk about when he asked her to stop by his office, though she was more bemused that Jim _had_ an office now. Len was there, leaning against a narrow table behind the desk. "I have to say, Captain," Christine remarked when she entered, "this is a little weird."

"It's a lot weird, sweetheart," Jim retorted. She raised an eyebrow at him for that, and he cleared his throat. "I mean, Commander."

"Thank you, sir," she replied. He waved her to a chair and she sat down, waiting for him to speak.

"I understand you're nearly finished with the coursework for your doctorate," he said.

"Finals are next week. Then I just have to spend a lot of quality time with my dissertation."

Jim nodded. "Well, I'm sure you know what this is about, Chris. I want you to stay aboard the _Enterprise_ as head nurse."

Her eyes flicked to Len, who was watching her silently. "Who's the chief medical officer?"

Jim smiled a little. "Well, that's going to depend a bit on your answer," he said. "I want to keep Bones as CMO and you as head nurse, but he says he'll only take the post if you're okay with it."

She exchanged another look with Len; he shrugged slightly. "Like I told him, I'd be your boss, but you'd still outrank me. Might be weird."

"Weirder than other things?" she asked, being vague even though it probably wasn't necessary.

"I've already heard about your relationship with Bones here," Jim told her, confirming her suspicion. "Although not in as much detail as I'd like."

In what probably wasn't his first act of insubordination, Len smacked the back of Jim's head.

Jim somehow refrained from retaliating, although he glared at Len for a second. "Seriously, Christine," he said, "you two are adults, and you're the best Starfleet has to offer. If you think you can work together, then I want you both on my ship. And yeah, Starfleet has regulations, but the only reason I'm here is because my parents broke some rules." Christine opened her mouth but couldn't get any sound to come out. Jim took that as hesitation and played what was probably his last card. "I'm willing to do all the paperwork if you're willing to do the real work."

Christine knew exactly what that paperwork looked like. There was no way she was turning down an offer like that. It was the best vengeance she could think of for all the times Jim had inconvenienced them.

* * *

  
On the morning of the first scheduled embarkation of the _Enterprise_ , Len woke in Christine's bed. This had become a regular thing in an alarmingly short period of time. Joanna no longer commented when he called her from the wrong place, and Jim started making cracks about how Len didn't really need his own apartment anymore. He ignored Jim. Being with Christine felt like coming home.

For a long time that morning he lay awake, watching her sleep, still in his arms. She had taken to wearing a shirt he'd left there instead of pajamas. He marveled a little at how a garment that was so plain and worn could look so sexy on her. She was so beautiful every minute of every day, of course, but the sight of her in his clothes was somehow more astounding to him than the miniskirts or the dress she'd worn to that party.

Of course, he liked her best naked, probably, but since clothes were rarely optional, he'd take what he could get.

She stirred and blinked at him sleepily. "Hey."

"Hey," he replied, before ducking his head to nuzzle her neck. "Wish we could sleep in."

"You always say that."

"It's usually true."

Christine sighed as he kissed the hollow of her throat. "What time is it?"

Len raised up on one elbow to look at her better. "That's not the traditional response."

She just rolled her eyes. "When have I ever been traditional, Len?"

She had a point.

Sooner than either of them would have liked, they got out of bed, maneuvering around Christine's tiny bathroom like they'd done this a hundred times instead of just a handful. They were a good fit, and Len just prayed that working together and sleeping together wouldn't ruin the relationship they already had.

No sense in taking tomorrow's trouble in advance, his mother would have told him. As they packed last-minute things and headed to the shuttle dock, Len reminded himself that Christine Chapel was worth all the work and worry that a relationship could throw at him.

They arrived at the shuttlepod and got the last two seats together, across from Uhura and Gaila. As the shuttle took off, Christine laid her hand over his and smiled. "It's time," she said.

"Time?"

"'To go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before.'"

McCoy frowned at her. "Are you throwing Shakespeare at me again?"

She laughed and leaned into him. "No. Not even remotely. A book Jim loaned me."

They rose up above the atmosphere, him gripping Christine's hand more tightly as he breathed through his aviophobia, and then the proper array of stars came into view. Despite knowing exactly what kind of dangers lurked out there, it was still breathtaking. On his left, Christine pushed herself as far up as she could and began to whisper. "'Stars, hide your fires,'" she said, her lips brushing his ear, "'let light not see my black and deep desires.'"

He made a sound that would probably be called a growl. But instead of complaining about the gratuitous Shakespeare, he leaned in very close and replied, "I'm intrigued. Care to tell me about these black and deep desires?"

She smiled brightly and kissed him, which caught him off-guard somewhat. "Not in public," she said. "Maybe later."

Len chuckled and lifted her hand to his lips. "It's a date."

* * *

  
(Note: "To go with bold entreaty whither no man had gone before" is, according to the Oracle of Google, a quote from H. P. Lovecraft's "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath". The "stars, hide your fires" line is, as mentioned in an earlier post, a quote from Shakespeare's _Macbeth_ , although I should probably admit it was Mumford + Sons' "Roll Away Your Stone" that got the line in my head when I started writing this. Aaaaand I guess I took the title from that song, come to think of it.)


End file.
